Mary Jackson

Numbers, Science, and Service in Hampton

Before engineers could design better high-speed aircraft, they had to understand how air rushed around wings and other surfaces. Mary Winston Jackson helped solve those problems. She was born in Hampton, Virginia, on April 9, 1921, and graduated from high school with highest honors. At Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, she studied mathematics and physical science and earned a bachelor's degree in 1942.

Jackson's route to aeronautics was not direct. She taught mathematics at a Black school in Maryland, then worked in several Hampton-area jobs. In April 1951, she joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. She began as a research mathematician, sometimes called a “human computer,” in the segregated West Area Computing unit led by Dorothy Vaughan. The separate workplace reflected Virginia's Jim Crow laws, not the quality of the women's work.

Learning in a Supersonic Wind Tunnel

After two years, engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki invited Jackson to work with him in Langley's 4-foot by 4-foot Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. The powerful tunnel could blast test models with air moving close to twice the speed of sound. Jackson learned to conduct experiments and analyze the measurements that the tunnel produced.

Czarnecki encouraged her to enter a training program for engineers. The program required graduate-level mathematics and physics classes offered after work by the University of Virginia. Those classes met at the all-white Hampton High School, so Jackson had to obtain special permission from the City of Hampton to attend. She completed the courses and qualified for a new kind of responsibility.

Becoming an Aerospace Engineer

Jackson earned her promotion to engineer in 1958, the same year NACA became NASA. She is remembered as NASA's first Black woman engineer. That September, she and Czarnecki published a technical report called Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds. Their experiments examined when the thin layer of air flowing over a cone changed from smooth to turbulent.

For nearly two decades, Jackson worked as an engineer and authored or co-authored about a dozen research reports. Much of her research explored airflow around aircraft, using evidence from wind tunnels and flight experiments. Her work required careful observation, exact mathematics, and clear explanations that other engineers could test.

Making More Room for Others

By the late 1970s, Jackson saw that women at Langley still faced barriers to promotion. In 1979, she left engineering and accepted a lower-grade position as Langley's Federal Women's Program Manager. In that role, she helped women and other employees understand the education and career steps that could open new opportunities. She retired from NASA in 1985 after 34 years at Langley.

Jackson also brought science into her community. She helped young people at Hampton's King Street Community Center build a working wind tunnel, and she served as a Girl Scout leader for more than 30 years. She died on February 11, 2005. In 2021, NASA formally named its Washington headquarters building for her. Jackson's wider contribution joins two kinds of engineering: studying how air moves and helping institutions remove barriers so more people can move forward.