Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America’s First Female Rocket Scientist tells the story of the woman chemist who came up with the formulation of the fuel for the first US satellite. Told with stupefying awkwardness by her son, the story is at its best when it sticks to the biographical details. Mary Morgan was born on a farm, was prevented by her cruel father from going to school, and had to make her own, solitary way through a few years of college, interrupted by the war. That made her not only the lone woman on the Rocketdyne technical staff, but also one of the rare staff members without a proper engineering degree — and yet she was one of the best.
If you can get past the unnecessarily breathless style, the irrelevant, invented details, and the back stories of how difficult it was for the author to get information from relatives, the tale of the young pioneer chemist is well worth reading.
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