Valerie Thomas
1943 – present
By Kathi Santora
Image of Valerie Thomas, Public domain
Ever since she glimpsed the tubes inside of the early-model TV in her Baltimore childhood home, Valerie Thomas’s curiosity about the workings of electronics was piqued.
Sadly, as was common in those days, she quickly got the message that electronics were not for girls.
It took finally enrolling in Morgan State (now Morgan State University) and its then-new Abstract Algebra course to kick-start her path to becoming a ground-breaking NASA data scientist and inventor.
She graduated with a degree in physics with highest honors in 1964 and soon went to work at NASA as a data analyst.
Over the years, her work contributed to satellite operation control centers, as well as oversight of the Landsat program, which has produced ground-breaking technology that enabled scientists to produce images of earth from space.
In the mid 1970s, Thomas began to experiment with how the position of concave mirrors reflected objects. She went on to invent and patent an optical device called the illusion transmitter, a device NASA adopted to visualize real-time, three-dimensional optical illusions of objects, for viewing of data from space. The device uses two concave mirrors—one at the transmission site and one at the receiving site—to transmit and project 3D images from space onto a screen.
Through her subsequent career, Thomas has contributed to projects that had major impacts on the developing computer network field, the Internet, and projects related to Halley’s Comet, ozone research, satellite technology, and the Voyager spacecraft.
Though her scientific contributions have been both innovative and powerful, Thomas is also known for mentoring students, especially those of color and for advancing job equity at NASA. She has served in organizations such as S.M.A.R.T., which specializes in space science education outreach, particularly for underrepresented communities in the Washington, D.C. area.
In August 1995, she retired from NASA and her positions of associate chief of the NASA Space Science Data Operations Office, manager of the NASA Automated Systems Incident Response Capability, and as chair of the Space Science Data Operations Office Education Committee. In 2018, Thomas was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, recognizing her contributions to satellite communication and remote sensing as a pioneer.
Resources and more reading:
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Thomas, accessed 11/25/25
78-Year-Old Valerie Thomas Invented Technology That Led to the Creation of 3-D Imaging, Oprah Daily, accessed 11/25/25