The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has renamed its Washington headquarters the first African American female engineer Mary Jackson. The event was held on Friday to formally change name of the agency’s headquarters building. Her grandson Bryan Jackson, left, and son-in-law Raymond Lewis unveiled the sign. 

In 1951, Mary Jackson was the first Black engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) – the forerunner of NASA. She worked at NASA for 34 years, starting as a research mathematician. NASA, in a statement, said her efforts and commitment have inspired generations.

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Jackson’s work in Langley’s West Area Computing Unit caught widespread national attention in the 2016 Margot Lee Shetterly book ‘Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race’.

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She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019, the nation’s highest civilian honour, under the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act.

“With the official naming of the Mary W Jackson NASA Headquarters today, we ensure that she is a hidden figure no longer,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk.

Jackson was born and raised in Hampton, Virginia. She initially worked as a math teacher in Calvert County, Maryland, and also held jobs as a bookkeeper and as a US Army secretary before beginning her aerospace career.

She did her Bachelor of Science in mathematics and physical science from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in 1942. For nearly two decades during her engineering career, she authored or co-authored numerous research reports, most of which focused on the behaviour of the boundary layer of air around aeroplanes.

In 1979, she joined Langley’s Federal Women’s Programme, where she worked hard to address the hiring and promotion of the next generation of female mathematicians, engineers, and scientists.

She retired from Langley in 1985 and passed away in Hampton on February 11, 2005, at the age of 83.