She made important contributions while at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) regarding heat shield construction and improvement of rocket engine designs that were critical to the success of the Apollo space program.

Dorothy Martin was born on September 18, 1919 in Harwood, Vernon County, Missouri to Laudell M (née Flynn) (1892–1978) and Robert W.

1945 - 1946 - DuPont de Nemours & Company, Rayon Division, Pioneer Research Lab, Buffalo, New York.

For a short period of time after leaving ORNL, she continued with similar research regarding uranium at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois.

Simon began work at Lewis Research Center, a division of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of NASA.

[6] Simon toured around Europe where she met with scientists from Germany, England, France, and Italy to examine their research regarding physical chemistry and radiochemistry.

Upon returning from her tour, she was promoted to assistant chief of NACA’s combustion branch, where she became a pioneer in female corporate management.

Once leaving NACA, Simon briefly held a position at Magnolia Petroleum in Texas, where she did work regarding oil sands.

There, she applied her previous experience with polymer construction and physical chemistry to develop the technology for early aerospace heat shields, which were critical to NASA’s crewed spacecraft endeavors.

[7] In 1965 she was appointed Director of Economic Systems Corporation, an Avco subsidiary that operated the largest girls' Job Corps Training Center at Poland Springs, Maine.