Engineering History: How Mary Golda Ross Shaped Space Exploration
I was the only female in my class. I sat on one side of the room and the guys on the other side of the room. I guess they didn’t want to associate with me. But I could hold my own with them, and sometimes did better.
— Mary Golda Ross
Known best for her work with Lockheed Corporation and their designs for air and spacecraft, Mary Golda Ross (1908-2008) was the first known Native American female engineer and mathematician.
Mary was born in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Her great-great-grandfather was the Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross, leader of the Cherokee Nation during the Indian Removal era of the 1830s until the Civil War. He was the longest-serving chief in the history of the Cherokee nation and fought against the forced removal of his people from their homelands.
At 20, Mary earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Her early career began in teaching before she became a statistical clerk. She then received her Master’s degree in mathematics in 1938 from Northeastern State Teachers’ College (now Northeastern State University) in Tahlequah after taking as many courses on astronomy as possible.
She was recruited by Lockheed Corporation in 1942 to solve design issues with their high speed flight-craft and worked on many other projects, including: designing concepts for interplanetary space travel, earth-orbiting flights, and early studies into orbiting satellites. During this time, she was sent to the University of California for further study, and she became the first Native American woman to obtain a professional certificate in engineering.
After the Second World War, when many women were made to leave their jobs as servicemen returned from duty, Ross was kept on the team due in part to her outstanding abilities and ambition. The team, Advanced Development Projects, which had developed the P-38 Lightning fighter plane, was also known as Skunk Works. Their work has remained largely secret to this day. Ross joined Skunk Works as a founding engineer and only woman aside from the secretary.
Some of her many accomplishments include: helping to write NASA’s Planetary Flight Handbook which constitutes some of the first logistical studies for missions to Mars and Venus, and developing operational requirements for spacecraft that were an integral step towards the Apollo program.
Following her retirement at 65 years of age, Ross was devoted to recruiting young women and Native American youth into S.T.E.M. careers. She was a staunch supporter of the American Indians in Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and the Council of Energy Resource Tribes.
At 96 years old, she wore a traditional Cherokee dress made by her niece to the 2004 opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. She died in 2008 and has since been featured on a commemorative U.S. dollar coin that celebrated the contributions of Native Americans to the U.S. space program.
