Space Ed Adventure

Judith Love Cohen, who helped create the Abort-Guidance System which rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts, went to work on the day she was in labor. She took a printout of a problem she was working on to the hospital. She called her boss and said she finished the problem and gave birth to actor Jack Black. Judith Love Cohen was, at various times in her fascinating life, an engineer who worked on the Pioneer, Apollo, and Hubble missions, an author & publisher of books about women in STEM and environmentalism in the 90s, a ballet dancer with the New York Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, an advocate for better treatment of women in the workplace, and actor Jack Black's mother. From an obituary written by her son Neil Siegel after her death in 2016: “My mother usually considered her work on the Apollo program to be the highlight of her career. When disaster struck the Apollo 13 mission, it was the Abort-Guidance System that brought the astronauts home safely. Judy was there when the Apollo 13 astronauts paid a ‘thank you’ [visit] to the TRW facility in Redondo Beach.” She finished her engineering career running the systems engineering for the science ground facility of the Hubble Space Telescope. During her engineering career, she was a vigorous and tireless advocate of better treatment for women in the workplace. Many things that today we consider routine - the posting of job openings inside of a company so that anyone could apply, formal job descriptions for every position, and so forth - were her creations. She had a profound impact on equality in the workforce.