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Barbara askins invention and its purpose
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Born in Tennessee in 1939, Barbara Askins began her career as a teacher.

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STEAM in History: Barbara Askins

For thousands of years, people have been searching for ways to see higher into the sky and deeper into space. Many advancements in photography had to be made long before telescopes like Hubble or Webb could send groundbreaking images back to Earth. One such contribution was made by a mother of two who started her career as a teacher. Read on to learn how chemist Barbara Askins revolutionized both space and medical imagery with her invention.

Who is Barbara Askins?

Born in Tennessee in 1939, Askins began her career as a teacher. She didn’t return to college to complete her bachelor’s and master’s in chemistry until after she’d married and had two children. In 1975, she accepted a position at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center as a chemist.

While working with NASA, she was presented with a problem to solve: how can the quality of photos taken from space be improved?

Using Chemistry to Improve Photo Quality:

At the time, photos were taken on film, which required several days to process into the final image. When taking a photo, the ca

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Barbara Askins

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, was in its heyday when the organization established The Marshall Space Flight Center, named for General George C. Marshall, in 1960. In 1961, the Center, based in Huntsville, Alabama, sent Alan B. Shepard, the nation’s first official “astronaut”, on a sub-orbital flight and in 1969, helped send man to the moon.

The personnel that have been associated with the Marshall Center over the last several decades include some of the brightest, most innovative scientists in the world, including many outstanding women scientists. Chemist Barbara S. Askins was one of those scientists.

Born in 1939 in Belfast, Tennessee, Askins began her career as a teacher and became mother to two children. She waited until after they entered school to go back to college and complete her bachelor's degree in Chemistry. Askins continued with her education, completing her master’s degree in Chemistry, before she accepted a position as a chemist for the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1975.

At Marshall, Askins was asked to work on dev

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Barbara Askins

American chemist (born 1939)

Barbara S. Askins (born 1939) is an American chemist. She is best known for her invention of a method to enhance underexposed photographic negatives. This development was used extensively by NASA and the medical industry, and it earned Askins the title of National Inventor of the Year in 1978.^[1]

Early years, education and early career

Askins was born in Belfast, Tennessee, in 1939. She began her career as a teacher. After her two children entered school, Askins returned to college to complete her bachelor's degree in chemistry and earn her master's degree in chemistry. She joined NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 1975.^[2]

Research career

Askins is a physical chemist who worked for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and is best known for her pioneering invention of a process in which "images on developed photographic emulsions can be significantly intensified by making the image silver radioactive and exposing a second emulsion to this radiation."^[3] The resulting print, known