“First NASA Female Engineer” JoAnn H. Morgan Hand Signed 4X6 B&W Photo

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“First NASA Female Engineer” JoAnn H. Morgan Hand Signed 4X6 B&W Photo
ES-9924
JoAnn Hardin Morgan
(December 4, 1940) is an American
aerospace engineer
who was the first female engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (
NASA
)
John F. Kennedy Space Center
and the first woman to serve as a senior executive at Kennedy Space Center. For her work at NASA, Morgan was honored by U.S. President
Bill Clinton
as a Meritorious Executive in 1995 and 1998. Prior to her retirement in 2003, she held various leadership positions over 40 years in the
human space flight
programs at NASA. Morgan served as the director of the External Relations and Business Development during her final years at the space center. JoAnn Hardin, the oldest child of four children of Don and Laverne Hardin, was born in
Huntsville, Alabama
on December 4, 1940, near where her father was stationed as a U.S. Army pilot at
Redstone Arsenal
during World War Two. While she was in high school, her family relocated to
Titusville, Florida
where her father worked at
Cape Canaveral
as an ordnance administrator in the U.S. Army's rocket program. There she met her future husband, Larry Morgan. Immediately after graduating from high school in June 1958, she joined the
Army Ballistic Missile Agency
at Cape Canaveral as a civilian engineering aide. In the Fall of 1958, Hardin enrolled at the University of Florida in
Gainesville
where she studied mathematics. During her summer breaks, she continued to work at Cape Canaveral under mentors such as German-American engineer
Wernher von Braun
. In her work as an engineering aide, Hardin had hands-on experience designing rocket launch computer systems for the initial NASA flight programs. After Hardin earned a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics at the
Jacksonville State University
in Alabama in 1963, she went to work for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center as an aerospace engineer.