10 Incredible Details Surrounding Judith Love Cohen, The Aerospace Engineer Who Helped Save Apollo 13

6 /10 Popular Son

In July 1969 – or at the first moon landing – Cohen was eight months pregnant with her fourth child. One day the following month she started working as usual then her water broke.

On her way out of the office, she managed to grab a printout of the problem she had been working on then continued to work on it while on labor.

Later that day, she phoned her boss to tell him that she had solved the problem and that the baby was born too. That baby was a future actor, musician, and an all-around star Jack Black.

5 /10 Hubble Telescope Engineer

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Cohen was still working at NASA with her second husband (and Jack’s father), Thomas Black, as satellite engineers on the Hubble Space Telescope.

They divorced in the late 1970s. Following her retirement in 1990, she set up a publishing company, Cascade Pass, and her third husband, David A. Katz, whom she married in the early 1980s.

She became a writer and published more than 20 books, including “A Clean Planet” and “You Can Be” series. She knew that other girls could benefit from the books, always motivated Cohen to keep on writing.

4 /10 Role Model

Back in her younger days, Cohen didn’t have any female role model in engineering. Except for the tiny but meaningful encouragement at home, she received no motivational guidance elsewhere.

So the books were as if she wrote them for young Judith Cohen herself. The “You Can Be” series was aimed at young female students pursuing careers in various fields of science.

Her husband David was in charge of drawing the illustrations. Another book titled “The Women of Apollo” features four women who played essential roles in the Apollo 11 mission.

3 /10 Woman Of Many Talents

Various workplace practices that many take for granted today, such as the formal description of the vacant position and internal listings of jobs, were only a few of her brilliant ideas.

The purpose is to encourage women to apply and remove any presumption that the positions are available only to men.

She was one of the best proof that women could be anything they wanted to be. Cohen herself was a dancer, mathematician, electrical engineer, satellite engineer, writer, wife, and mother.

She was a solid influential force who inspired thousands of young women to pursue interests in all sorts of professional careers.

2 /10 Different Kind Of Lady

When Cohen was 66, she told how her counselor once said that she should have attended a good finishing school and learned to be a lady.

Fortunately, she didn’t go along with the suggestion. Instead, Cohen studied engineering at USC and worked at NASA. She still ended up being a lady, just a different kind of that.

She also expressed the notion that most girls only think about certain professions when they see other people doing the jobs or on TV; they know women can be lawyers from “Ally McBeal” or surgeons in “ER.”

1 /10 Tiny Bits Of Her Legacy

Cohen sold more than 100,000 copies of her books. She passed away on July 25, 2016, from cancer.

She is survived by her husband David Katz, her children including Neil Siegel, Rachel Siegel, Jack Black, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren.

She was a Registered Professional Electrical Engineer and president of the LA Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.

Her works for Apollo missions and the Hubble Telescope, as well as all the inspirational books she wrote, made only tiny bits of her true legacy for the world.