March 29th, 2021

Mary Jackson was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Jackson started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division in 1951. After taking advanced engineering classes, she eventually became NASA's first black female engineer in 1958.

Mary began her engineering career in an era in which female engineers of any background were a rarity; in the 1950s, she very well may have been the only black female aeronautical engineer in the field. For nearly two decades she enjoyed a productive engineering career, authoring or co-authoring a dozen or so research reports. After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available. But the promotions slowed, and she became frustrated at her inability to break into management-level grades. So she accepted a demotion to become a manager of both the Federal Women's Program and of the Affirmative Action Program. In this role, she worked to influence the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering, and mathematics careers.

Jackson's story features in the 2016 non-fiction book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. She is one of the three protagonists in Hidden Figures, the film adaptation released the same year.

In 2019, Jackson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2020 the Washington, D.C. headquarters of NASA was renamed the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters. NASA held a virtual ceremony for the naming.