Ann Whitaker

Ann Fite Whitaker is a retired American physicist who worked for many years at NASA on the effects of space environments on materials.

Graduating in 1961, at the height of the Space race, she became one of the first women to earn a physics degree at the college.

[1] She began graduate study with a fellowship to University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, but left school for a position at NASA.

[5] Her initial research there concerned she effects of space environments on lubrication[1] and, later in the 1960s, on the crawler-transporter used to move Saturn V rockets before their launch.

[5][3] Berry College gave Whitaker their 1978 Alumni Award for Distinguished Achievement.