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
Engineer and mathematician Mary Golda Ross (1908-2008) was born in Park Hill, Oklahoma, known for many years as the centre of Cherokee culture. Her great-great grandfather was Principal Chief John Ross, the longest-serving chief in the history of the Cherokee nation, who fought against the forced removal of his people from their homelands after the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
At just 20 years old, Mary earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics. She began her career during the Great Depression teaching in rural Oklahoma schools. In 1936, she passed the civil service examination, joining the Bureau of Indian affairs in Washington DC as a statistical clerk. The following year, she was reassigned to an American Indian boarding school in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Throughout her time in the civil service, Mary travelled from Washington DC and Santa Fe to take summer classes at Colorado State College of Education, now known as the University of Northern Colorado. She completed her master’s degree in mathematics in 1938. Reportedly, she was fascinated with space and took as many courses on astronomy as possible.
People with her skills were in high demand during the Second World War, and she was recruited by Lockheed Corporation in 1942 to solve design issues with their high-speed aircraft. During this time, her employers recognised her potential and she was sent to the University of California for further study, where 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 due in part to her outstanding abilities and ambition. She joined the Advanced Development Projects team, also known as ‘Skunk Works’, as a founding engineer and was the only woman aside from the secretary. Skunk Works gained notoriety for developing the P-38 Lightning fighter plane and their work has remained largely secret to this day.
Mary could pursue her curiosity about space at Lockheed, designing concepts for interplanetary space travel, earth-orbiting flights, and early studies into orbiting satellites.
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 and the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, an organisation that advocates for the interests of Native American tribes with fossil fuel deposits in their lands.
She was invited to the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in 2004, at 96 years old, and wore a traditional Cherokee dress made by her niece. She died in 2008 and has since been featured on a commemorative dollar coin that celebrated the contributions of Native Americans to the U.S. space program.
