NASA names headquarters after Mary Jackson, the agency’s first Black female engineer

Jackson’s career at NASA began at the then-segregated West Area Computing Unit. | Image: NASA NASA has announced it will name its headquarters in Washington DC after the agency’s first Black female engineer, Mary Jackson. Jackson started work at NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), in 1951 at the then-segregated West Area Computing Unit. She took night classes in mathematic and physics to qualify as an engineer in 1958, before rising to achieve the most senior title within the engineering department in 1979. Her work at the agency, along with that of fellow Black female engineers and mathematicians, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, was told in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. “She was a scientist, humanitarian, wife, mother, and trailblazer” “Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very... Continue reading…
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