Melba Roy Mouton - computing pioneer

The first hero on our website is Melba Roy Mouton (1929-1990), an American mathematician who served as Assistant Chief of Research Programs at NASA's Trajectory and Geodynamics Division in the 1960s. She was an incredible lady and an unsung pioneer of advanced mathematics and early computing.

She headed a team of NASA mathematicians called "computers". She also served as Head Mathematician for Echo Satellites 1 and 2 before becoming Head Computer Programmer and then Program Production Section Chief at Goddard Space Flight Center.

Mouton was born in 1929, in Fairfax, Virginia to Rhodie and Edna Chloe. She graduated from Howard University in 1950 with a master's degree in mathematics, after receiving a bachelor's degree in mathematics with a minor in physics. While at Howard, Mouton was president of the Kelly Miller Chapter of Future Teachers of America and a member of the NAACP, the Mathematics Club, and the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She also was on the Dean's Honor Roll for four years and was selected for the '1949-1950 Who’s Who' among Students in American Universities and Colleges.

She started working for NASA in 1959, after working for the Army Map Service and the Census Bureau. The following year, Echo 1 was put into orbit, and Mouton lead a team of NASA mathematicians (known as "computers") in tracking its orbit.

While at Goddard, Mouton was an instructor for a series of seminars on A Programming Language held at Watson Research Labs. In a NASA symposium, she published a paper about the importance of investing in thorough, descriptive program documentation for projects which are to be maintainable over time.

She was also prominently featured alongside some of her African American colleagues in an advertisement in the Afro American designed to spotlight NASA's diversity. Mouton received both an Apollo Achievement Award and an Exceptional Performance Award from NASA before she retired in 1973. Mouton had three children and was married twice, first to Wardell Roy and later to Webster Mouton. She died in Silver Spring, Maryland on June 25, 1990, of a brain tumour when only 61.

Citation: Wikipedia 2021