Mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Winston Jackson was born on April 9, 1921, in Hampton, Virginia. graduated from the all Black high school, George P. Phenix High School, with the highest honors, in 1937. Math was one of her favorite subjects at school, and she enrolled in the Hampton Institute. At a time when most of Hampton Institute’s female students earned degrees in home economics or nursing, Mary earned two bachelor’s degrees, one in mathematics and the other in physical science. in 1942. After graduation, she relocated to Calvert County in Maryland to teach mathematics in segregated schools. In 1943, she became a secretary and bookkeeper for the United Service Organizations (USO).
From 1943 – 1951, she returned to the Hampton area to start a family. Following World War II, the Space Race was underway. All eyes were on the U.S National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) founded in 1958. In the years leading up to the 1955 Space Race, NACA is estimated to have hired several hundred women as computers at its research hub in Virginia. Mary held several jobs in administration roles before she accepted a position with the NACA Langley Aeronautical Laboratory’s segregated West Area Computers in 1951, where her supervisor was Dorothy Vaughan.
The state of Virginia enforced segregation in the workplace (in spite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802, which prohibited discrimination in the defense industry). So Mary, tired of the separate but equal practices in the facility, including separate “White” and “Colored” bathrooms and a lunchroom for Whites only considered leaving her job. But a supervisor who had heard her complaints, asked her to work for him in an engineering environment in which she flourished. She became an expert working with wind tunnels and analyzing data on aircraft flight experiments.
Mary joined a fleet of roughly 80 Black female mathematicians stationed in the segregated West Area Computing section to crunch numbers on flightpaths and other projects critical to NACA’s space program. Under the supervision of Dorothy Vaughn, these women helped support the launch and landing of John Glenn. In 1953, an engineer named Kazimierz Czarnecki offered Jackson work in the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel, a wind tunnel used to study forces on a model by generating winds at almost twice the speed of sound. Czarnecki offered her hands-on experience conducting experiments in the facility, and encouraged her to enter a training program that would allow her to earn a promotion from mathematician to engineer.
Trainees had to take graduate-level math and physics in after-work courses managed by the University of Virginia. Because the classes were held at then-segregated Hampton High School, however, she needed special permission from the City of Hampton to join her white peers in the classroom. Never one to flinch in the face of a challenge, she requested and received permission to attend the classes. Upon completion of the program, she was promoted in 1958 to an aerospace engineer, becoming NASA’s first Black female engineer. That same year, she co-authored her first report, “Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds.”
Jackson worked as an aerospace engineer for more than 20 years, primarily focused on airflow around aircraft. Mary climbed the ranks of NASA’s engineering department, landing a spot in the Theoretical Aerodynamics Branch of the Subsonic-Transonic Aerodynamics Division. There, she analyzed data from wind tunnel and aircraft flight experiments that would shape the structures of U.S planes. Mary published her findings in roughly a dozen research reports with breezy titles like “Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds.” Over the years, she continued to work as an engineer in several divisions at NASA and by 1979 was the most senior engineer.
In 1978, Mary changed career paths again, becoming a human resources administrator. In that position, she helped other women and minority workers advance their careers. Mary used her knowledge and expertise from serving as the Federal Women’s Program Manager in the Office of Equal Opportunity Program and as the Affirmative Action Program Manager. Mary Jackson is noted for her work in helping women and other minorities in her field. While at NASA she served as the Federal Women’s Program Manager in the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and as the Affirmative Action Program Manager. Jackson chaired and served on many different organizations’ boards and committees, and was a Girl Scout Troop Leader for thirty years.
During her years at NASA, Jackson had worked tirelessly to promote the work of her fellow Black and female scientists and engineers. She helped others advance their careers by recommending what and where to study in order to be promoted. Throughout her career she received numerous awards and recognitions, including: The Apollo Group Achievement Award (1969), the Iota Lambda Sorority Award for the Peninsula Outstanding Woman Scientist (1976) and the Congressional Gold Medal, just to name a few. Mary overcame segregation and gender bias to become NASA’s first Black female engineer in 1958. Until her retirement in 1985, she counseled women and minorities and advised them to study and take courses to increase their opportunity for promotion.