Helen Ling

Helen Ling (née Yee Chow, born October 1, 1928) is a former software engineer who worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Early life Ling was born in Canton, China and survived the Japanese bombing of Hong Kong. She studied at Canton College. She immigrated to the United States to attend college, and ended up studying at University of Notre Dame. She majored in art and minored in Mathematics. Shortly after graduation, she was hired at JPL.

Career Ling's brother worked at JPL, and she thought the job would be perfect for her. Ling was a supervisor for the computing group at JPL. She made efforts to employ women computer programmers during the late 1950s and early 1960s - the programming group used to call themselves "Helen's Girls". At the time, women at JPL were forced to quit if they became pregnant.

Quotes "Men back then always thought they knew more than you did," Ling remembers. "So if you hire them under you, they're uncomfortable, you're uncomfortable. So I just hired women just out of college. I thought that if you didn't give them a chance, they'll never get a chance."