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Tech Throwback: What You Should Know About Mary W. Jackson

NASA has said that it will rename its headquarters after the agency’s first female African American engineer, Mary Jackson. Today, on our tech throwback, we write about this outstanding woman.

 

Mary Jackson had studied Mathematics and Physical Science at Hampton University and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in both fields in 1942 at the age of 21. She taught in a segregated school for African Americans in Maryland for a year.

 

Mary Jackson later worked as a bookkeeper and then as a receptionist and clerk. It was during her time as a clerk at the Office of the Chief Army Field Forces that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) recruited her.

 

She started working at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia in 1951. She was 30 at the time and worked from the Institute’s segregated West Area Computing section. Jackson reported to Dorothy Vaughan, who supervised the West Area section.

 

While she was working with the NACA (which the NASA succeeded in 1958); she had to obtain permission from the City of Hampton, to take night classes at the University of Virginia with its all-white students. It was on completing the graduate-level courses that she got promoted to aerospace engineer. Making her the first African American woman to earn the title.

 

She worked with engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki on the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel project. Jackson also had the task of analysing data from wind tunnels to understand their impact on airplane flights and help to improve US airplanes.

 

NASA rename headquarters after Mary Johnson
Mary Johnson with a model plane at NASA standing in front of a wind tunnel. Photo: DW.
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Working in many other divisions in NACA (and then NASA), Mary Jackson co-authoured 12 technical papers. By the time she turned 58, she had gotten the highest title anyone could have in NASA’s engineering department. This also meant that there was little she could do to climb her career ladder.

 

Mary Jackson took a demotion instead so that she could become an administrator in the Equal Opportunity Specialist field. Serving in this new role, she worked at bringing more women and other minorities into the field.

 

She received numerous awards during her lifetime. Also, after her death in 2005, the United States Congress honoured her with the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019. Mary W. Jackson is also one of the three female protagonists of the 2016 book and film, Hidden Figures.

 

News that NASA is renaming its headquarters after Mary W. Jackson has generated positive responses. Leland Melvin, an astronaut said:

 

 

Christina Koch, a NASA astronaut that recently returned to earth from the International Space Station also said:

 

 

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Onwuasoanya Obinna

A reader of books and stringer of words. Passionate about Science and Tech. When not writing or reading he is surfing the web and Tweeting.

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