Blazing Their Own Trails: The Engineering Passion of Judith Cohen and Neil Siegel

In the summer of 1969, Judith Cohen, eight months pregnant with her fourth child, watched the moon landing from her living room in Pacific Palisades, California. For Cohen, watching the lunar excursion module lower itself softly onto the gray surface was an especially gratifying experience. An electrical engineer for TRW, Cohen's work—a small, vital computer called the abort guidance system—was on board. Until this point, she had worked largely on defense projects—weapons systems that were never seen, seldom talked about, and hopefully never used.