Engineering is a field that has been notoriously dominated for years by white men. Men make up nearly 80% of all engineers, and of those male engineers, about 70% are white. Despite the rigor of this field, these trailblazers didn’t let anyone stop them as they went on to make history through their contributions to the field of engineering and to mankind as a whole.
Mary Jackson
Mary Jackson, born 1921 in Hampton, Virginia, would go on to be one of the most famous NASA mathematicians. You might recognize her name from the movie “Hidden Figures.” Mary Jackson graduated college from the Hampton Institute, where she obtained two degrees, one in math and one in physical sciences. After finishing college, she took her first job as a math teacher in Maryland. After several more career changes, she got a job at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in the segregated West Area Computing section in 1951.
After only two years, Jackson was given a job working in the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel, a supersonic wind tunnel at NASA. Her supervising engineer, Kazimierz Czarnecki, got her to enter into a training program that would allow Jackson to be promoted from a mathematician to an engineer. The classes were managed by the University of Virginia, and Jackson needed special permission to take the advanced courses as they were taught in a segregated school. Not one to shy away from a challenge, Jackson completed these courses and became NASA’s first black female engineer in 1958.
Jackson co-authored her report, “Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds,” in 1958, and went on to spend nearly 30 years working for NASA, eventually becoming Langley’s Federal Women’s Program Manager. She took on many promotions, authored dozens of reports, and ended her career with a variety of awards. An Apollo Group Achievement Award, serving as a chair for one of Langley’s United Way campaigns, and being named Langley’s Volunteer of the Year in 1976 are some of her notable achievements from her time paving the way for many more black female engineers to come.
Mae C. Jemison
Mae C. Jemison, another NASA engineer, is known as being the first ever black woman to travel into space.
Born in 1956 in Decatur, Alabama, Jemison became inspired to learn about science by watching the Apollo missions as well as Star Trek on television. Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, portrayed by African American actress Nichelle Nichols, helped to inspire Jemison to one day travel into space. Jemison graduated from high school at only 16 years old, and then went on to attend Stanford University.
Jemison was one of the only African American students at her school, and had to deal with racial discrimination along with the difficult coursework of an engineering track. She served as president of the Black Student Union, and obtained degrees in African American studies as well as Chemical Engineering. Deciding that these two degrees weren’t enough for her, she then went on to Cornell Medical School.
While in medical school, Jemison’s life was nothing short of extraordinary. She led a study for the American Medical Student Association in Cuba, worked at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, and went into the Peace Corps as a medical officer a few years after graduating from Cornell with a Doctorate of Medicine in 1981. After opening her own private practice as a doctor, she eventually decided to apply for NASA’s astronaut program.
She was chosen as one of the 15 out of 2,000 applicants in 1987 once NASA started accepting new astronauts after the Challenger Explosion. After working on projects at the Kennedy Space Center and the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, she eventually became a mission specialist in 1989. Just three years later, she was one of six astronauts who went into space aboard the Endeavor space shuttle, making her the first ever black woman to venture into space. After six years as an astronaut, Jemison retired from NASA and began teaching environmental studies at Dartmouth as well as creating a consulting company, The Jemison Group, that encourages science, technology, and social change. She also got to be in an episode of Star Trek after one of the actors learned she was a fan.
Jemison has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, National Medical Association Hall of Fame, and Texas Science Hall of Fame. She has received the National Organization for Women’s Intrepid Award and the Kilby Science Award, and currently leads the 100 Year Starship project through the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which intends to space travel to another star possible within the next 100 years.
Ursula Burns
Ursula Burns, born in New York City in 1958, would go on to be the first ever black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Burns was raised in Manhattan on the Lower East Side, where she was one of three children to a single mother. Burns excelled in math at school, and eventually went on to the New York Polytechnic Institution, where she obtained a bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. Following this, Burns began to pursue a masters degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, where she would then become acquainted with the company Xerox, which sells print and digital document services.
Burns joined Xerox through the company’s graduate engineering program for minorities, where she began working there as a summer intern for mechanical engineering. The company paid for part of her education, and Burns finished her masters degree in 1981. From there, she went on to work for Xerox in product development. Working her way up, Burns eventually became senior vice president of corporate strategic services in 2000, where she was overseeing production.
Broadening her leadership skills through this position, Burns became president of Xerox in 2007, and was eventually named CEO as well as becoming chairman of the board.
Burns served on the board of various companies such as Uber, and was also involved in the STEM Education Coalition as well as the President’s Export Council under president Obama. Under these roles, she took on legislative advocacy to promote student interest in STEM as well as advising the president on American exports.
These incredible women are inspiring to generations to come, but are unfortunately not talked about nearly as much as they should be. You can read more about these extraordinary women at the sources below.
Sources:
https://www.nasa.gov/content/mary-w-jackson-biography
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mae-jemison