Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Born April 9th, 1921
Hired by NASA in 1951
Graduated with honors from George P in 1937
Project Mercury launched in 1961
Became NASA's first African American engineer in 1958
Mary Jackson (April 9, 1921 – February 11, 2005) was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division in 1951. She took advanced engineering classes and, in 1958, became NASA's first black female engineer.
Mary Jackson was NASA's first female African American engineer. Jackson was one of the women at NASA whose story was depicted in the Hidden Figures movie. At NASA, she worked on research related to the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel.
Mary graduated from George P. Phenix Training school with honors. Mary Jackson then earned her bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physical science from Hampton University in 1942.She was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha as well.
In 1951, Jackson was recruited by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She started as a research mathematician at the Langley Research Center in her hometown of Hampton, Virginia. She worked under Dorothy Vaughan in the segregated West Area Computing Section.
In the 1970s she helped African American children in her community create a miniature wind tunnel for testing airplanes.
Jackson was married on November 18, 1944 to Levi Jackson Sr., a sailor in the U.S. Navy, until his death in 1992. They had two children, Levi Jackson Jr. and Carolyn Marie Lewis.
Given that Mary changed the way of space engineering she was given many awards and recoginition. Not only did she help NASA's development, she also helped establish equality in the science and engineering fields.
Mary has been given pleny awards and honors and there are many to list but these were her main awards.
-Langley Research Center Certificate of Appreciation, 1976–1977
Congressional Gold Medal, 2019
-In 2019, Jackson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
-In 2021, the Washington, D.C. headquarters of NASA was renamed the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters.
Mary Jackson remained at NASA until her retirement in 1985, and she passed away in 2005 at the age of 83. She is remembered not only for her ground-breaking professional achievements, but for her life-long advocacy for access and equality in science.
In the end, Her math and science skills earned her a position as a "human computer" for NACA, and she later became NASA's first black female engineer. Along with serving a vital role in the development of the space program, she helped other women and minorities advance their careers. Jackson
In 2016, the story of Jackson and her NASA colleagues Katherine G. Johnson and Dorothy Johnson Vaughan, who calculated flight trajectories for project Mercury and the Apollo program in the 1960s, made it to the big screen in Hidden Figures.
Mary Jackson works as a teacher and a USO secretary before taking a job as a computer at the NACA. She is extremely bright, just as she was in real life, and she finds herself frustrated when the intelligence that landed her a job at Langley doesn't shield her from discrimination at the hands of her white colleagues.