Mary Jackson
(born April 9, 1921, Hampton, Virginia, U.S.?died February 11, 2005, Hampton) was an American mathematician and
aerospace engineer
who in 1958 became the first African American female engineer to work at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA).
She was born and raised in
Hampton
,
Virginia
. After graduating from
high school
with highest honours, she earned a dual degree in
mathematics
and
physical science
at the Hampton Institute (now
Hampton University
) in 1942. She worked as a math teacher in
Maryland
for a year before returning to Hampton. She later married Levi Jackson.
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Numbers and Mathematics
In 1951 she started working at the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
(NACA), where she was a member of its West Area Computing unit?the
West Computers
,
comprising
African American female mathematicians?and Jackson’s supervisor was
Dorothy Vaughan
. The women provided data that were later essential to the early success of the U.S. space program. At the time, NACA was segregated, with Black employees required to use separate bathrooms and dining facilities.
In 1953 Jackson left the West Computers to work for engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki, conducting experiments in a high-speed
wind tunnel
. He suggested that Jackson enter a training program that would allow her to become an engineer. Since Virginia’s schools were still segregated, she had to obtain special permission to take classes with white students. Jackson ultimately completed the necessary courses, and in 1958 she became the first Black female engineer at NASA, which had been established earlier that year; NACA had been incorporated into it.
Jackson worked as an aerospace engineer for some 20 years. Much of her work centred on the airflow around aircraft. Despite early promotions, she was
denied
management-level positions, and in 1979 she left
engineering
and took a demotion to become manager of the women’s program at NASA. In that post, she sought to improve the opportunities for all women at the organization. She retired in 1985.
Jackson’s contributions to the space program received greater recognition after her death in 2005. She and other West Computers?including Vaughan and
Katherine Johnson
?were the inspiration for Margot Lee Shetterly’s book
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
, which was made into an acclaimed
film
; both were released in 2016.
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