Dorothy McFadden Hoover (1918-2000)

2023 Inductee

Dorothy McFadden Hoover was an accomplished aeronautical research scientist who was born in Hope, Arkansas in 1918. One of her greatest achievements was her contribution to the development of the “thin sweptback tapered wing,” which became the aviation industry standard and transformed air travel in the 20th century. Her life story was essentially unknown until she was briefly mentioned in the highly acclaimed book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly. Shetterly described Hoover as “exceptionally fluent in abstract mathematical concepts and complex equations.”

Dorothy Estheryne McFadden was the youngest of four children born to William McFadden and Elizabeth Wilburn McFadden. She graduated from Henry Clay Yerger High School in Hope in 1934 at the age of fifteen. McFadden entered Arkansas AM&N, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, as a sixteen-year-old in 1934 and graduated in 1938 with a BS in mathematics.

After teaching high school for several years, Dorothy earned an MS in mathematics from Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), the first institution in the country to award graduate degrees to African Americans. Her thesis, “Some Projectile Transformations and Their Applications,” prepared her for her future work in aeronautics.

Dorothy was one of the first of six African American women hired by Langley Labs, NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, later NASA). Her graduate-level work helped set her apart from her peers, and she was given rigorous mathematical assignments from Langley engineer R. T. Jones, the premier aeronautical engineer of the twentieth century. In 1946 Jones selected Dorothy to be his personal mathematician. She was the first of the Black human computers to work directly with an engineer and she thrived in this highly competitive environment.

In late 1946 Dorothy began working with R.T. Jones’ successor, Frank S. Malvestuto Jr., a brilliant engineer and prolific researcher. By 1951, she had earned the title of Aeronautical Research Scientist. That same year, she was listed as co-author with Malvestuto on two significant research publications addressing “thin sweptback tapered wings” on aircraft. Being listed as a co-author was a landmark accomplishment. She was the first African American woman to be listed on a Langley engineering report.

In 1952, Dorothy’s marriage to Ricardo Hoover ended, and she temporarily left the world of engineering to pursue her interests in theoretical mathematics, earning an MA in physics at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She was the first woman, of any race, to earn a master’s in physics from UA. A portion of her 1954 master’s thesis, “Estimates of Error in Numerical Integration,” was included in the Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science the following year.

Hoover returned to the Washington DC area, where she served in a variety of government positions. In 1959 Hoover joined a small group of highly skilled mathematicians in the theoretical division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, combining her work in physics with her mathematical prowess and contributing valuable information that promoted America’s success in the space race.

Dorothy McFadden Hoover’s tenacity in her pursuit of advanced degrees in mathematics and physics blazed a trail for all women, and especially for women of color. In addition, she broke the “glass ceiling” several times in her professional life, coauthoring papers with white male scientists at NACA and achieving a number of “firsts” in both academics and in government service. Ms. Hoover’s success was stunning given the many obstacles of the Jim Crow South, coupled with the fact that she was a woman in a male-dominated profession.

While continuing her mathematics research in Goddard’s Theoretical Division, Hoover began writing a book, A Layman Looks with Love at Her Church, a history of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Hoover was a member of the Campbell AME Church located in the Anacostia Historic District in southeast Washington, D.C. The book was published in 1970.

Dorothy McFadden Hoover died in 2000 in Washington DC.

Photos Courtesy of Richard D. Sallee