Barbara Crawford Johnson

Barbara Crawford Johnson is an American aeronautical engineer.^[1]

Education

In 1946, Barbara Crawford Johnson became the first woman to earn a Bachelor's degree in general engineering from the University of Illinois.^[2]

Projects

• The recovery of hypersonic gliders
• Lunar reentry vehicle research
• Orbital rendezvous
• The Navaho missile
• The Hound Dog air-to-ground missile
• The Apollo Lunar Landing Program
• Lunar Landing
• Skylab
• Apollo-Soyuz
• Space Shuttle (responsible for Shuttle system and Orbiter Project mission related analysis).

Awards

• 1975: The Distinguished Alumni Merit Award, University of Illinois College of Engineering^[2]
• 1976: Dirk Brouwer Award, Americal Astronautical Society^[3]

Cultural references

• In Mad Men season 1, episode 12 ("Nixon vs. Kennedy"), Peggy Olson reports to work, the morning after leaving a bacchanalian election night office party in progress, and finds the Sterling Cooper office space in shambles and her locker broken into and emptied of her spare blouse and $3 "mad money". When her hungover male colleagues mock her, she threatens to report the theft to building security. This incites them to call her "Barbara Crawford", behind her back, in one of multiple "astronaut" references made throughout the series in association with characters who are self-made. (Peggy, recently graduated from secretarial school and hired as a secretary, demonstrated talent that earned her the title and income associated with the role of "copywriter" at Sterling Cooper; two other self-made characters referred to as "astronauts" are Ida Blankenship and Don Draper). To underscore this association (in addition to referencing the sensation Peggy received from a vibrating weightloss device for which she wrote copy and cinched her promotion to copywriter, and to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy's campaign pledge to put the first man on the moon), the previous episode, "Indian Summer", ended with Peggy's locking her bedroom door before donning the vibrating weight loss device and then lying in bed, on the night she negotiated her raise and earned praise for her work, and the song "Fly Me to the Moon"'s playing over the credits.

References

1. "SWE Women - Barbara Crawford Johnson". The Society of Women Engineers. 2008-03-13. Retrieved 2012-10-17.
2. "Barbara Crawford Johnson". Engineering at Illinois. Retrieved 2012-10-17.
3. "Dirk Brouwer Award | American Astronautical Society". Astronautical.org. 2012-08-20. Retrieved 2012-10-17.