Born in Hampton, Virginia, mathematician and aeronautical engineer Mary Jackson is an unsung hero of social justice and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Jackson excelled academically, graduating from high school with honors and then earning a dual degree in Mathematics and Physics from Hampton University. She had several jobs before working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, currently known as NASA) but it was not until she worked for them as a “human computer” that she had the chance to truly let her talents shine. At NACA, computers like Jackson calculated the answers to long, complex equations by hand. These very equations are the ones that advanced the United States’ position in the Space Race and enabled Neil Armstrong to safely land on the moon. …show more content…
NACA promoted her from Computer to Aeronautical Engineer. NASA recognizes Mary Jackson as their first black engineer and says that she “may have been the only black female aeronautical engineer in the field” during her time working there. As an engineer, Jackson analyzed data from wind tunnel simulations and NACA aircrafts. She put in an unbelievable amount of effort reach this prestigious position at the company, but after working for a while as an engineer, Jackson decided it was time to pursue a higher calling and got involved in social advocacy. She demoted herself to an administrative position at NACA and then got involved in Equal Employment Opportunity, Affirmative Action, and women’s programs in order to help minorities and women be more successful in their occupations. As if Jackson had not already done enough good in the world, after retirement, she got involved in multiple organizations for the empowerment of women and
Chief Joseph and Helen Hunt Jackson are two very important people who both share strong yet different perspectives toward the treachery of the U.S. Government along with the unfair treatment of Indians around the 1800’s. Chief Joseph was born in 1840 in the Wallowa valley of Oregon, and belonged to the Nez Percé tribe, which was made up of some 400 indians. The Government had made many valid promises among the tribes, just to come back and break these words with more conflict and war. All Chief Joseph was in search for was for the chaos among the whites and indians to be replaced with peace, brotherhood, and equality. Stated in the text, “We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men.” In other words, Chief Joseph believed that people
... an excellent teacher who inspired all of her students, even if they were undergraduates, with her huge love for mathematics. Aware of the difficulties of women being mathematicians, seven women under her direction received doctorates at Bryn Mawr. Anna took her students to mathematical meetings oftenly. She also urged the women to participate on an equal professional level with men. She had great enthusiasm to teach all she knew about mathematics. She loved learning all she could about mathematics. Anna was a big contributor to mathematics. Anna was gifted in this department. She spent most of her life trying to achieve her accomplishments. She truly is a hero to women. She achieved all of these accomplishments when women mathematicians were very uncommon. She deserved all the awards and achievements she won. Judy Green and Jeanne Laduke, science historians, stated,
...acknowledged as the greatest women mathematician of the 1900’s, even though she had to go through many obstacles and chauvinism. She was the first women to be accepted into a major college. She proved many of the stereotypes that women were considered to be erroneous, which in the long run also made her a famous person. She was the one who discovered the associative law, commutative law, and the distributive law. These are the Laws that make the basics for Algebra, Geometry, and Basic math. All together she has unquestionably earned the title as the most famous woman mathematician of the 1900’s.
Anne Moody had thought about joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but she never did until she found out one of her roommates at Tougaloo college was the secretary. Her roommate asked, “why don’t you become a member” (248), so Anne did. Once she went to a meeting, she became actively involved. She was always participating in various freedom marches, would go out into the community to get black people to register to vote. She always seemed to be working on getting support from the black community, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Son after she joined the NAACP, she met a girl that was the secretary to the ...
Military aviation was in no way spared from the deficit of labour and resources across the globe. In 1939, an American pilot named Jackie Cochran, famous for her competitive achievements breaking speed and altitude records, wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt suggesting that women aviators could help out in the face of an emergency. By 1940, Britain’s Royal Air Force began using women as ferry pilots and in Russia, women were flying combat missions (Myers, 640).
Mary Eliza Mahoney was born May 7, 1845 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Smith, J, & Phelps, S, 1992) Mary Mahoney was the first African American professional nurse. She spent over 40 years as a private duty nurses going to sick people’s homes nursing them back to health. She was such a wonderful private duty nurse that after joining a nursing directory, Mary was called upon time after time by the families that hired her all over the country near and faraway. Mary Mahoney was a member of the Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada now known as the American Nurses Association (ANA) since 1896. (Webster, Raymond B, 1999) She was also one of the first members of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) which was a minority nursing organizations that was focused on equality for African-American nurses comparable to that of non minority nurses. Mary was named chaplain of the organization and was later named a lifetime member. After her death on January 4, 1926 from breast cancer the National Association of Colored Graduates Nurses named an award in honor of Mary Eliza Mahoney, after the NACGN was disbanded in 1951 the American Nurses Association continued the Mary Eliza Mahoney award. (Webster, Raymond B, 1999)
Sarah Margaret Fuller, better known as Margaret Fuller, was considered one of the Great American authors that wrote during the transcendentalism period. Particularly, in her work titled Meditations written in 1833 we can see evidence of the characteristics, themes and style identified with the transcendentalism movement, Margaret Fuller then remains one of the most identifiable and iconic writers of her time.
I. Colin Powell said, “A dream does not become a reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work”. This quote is the perfect one to describe Katherine Johnson because when she first got into NACA, they would not let women in the meetings they had to discuss the process of their projects or of their future projects. With her determination, Katherine was let into the meetings and thanks to that, she was able to do what she did. Because of all her hard work, Katherine Johnson has been recognized for doing the calculation that sent the first American to space, and overcoming the barriers of being an African American woman. (THESIS).
For a long time, women’s potential in Science was little to none. However, over the years, it has now changed because of the outstanding breakthroughs and encouraging accomplishments women have done through the years. It is because of them, women’s potential in Science and other realms of studies has now evolved with more understandings and discoveries. It is for the reason of Maria Mitchell, one of the first female astronomers to be recognized in Science, that women’s potential were essentially respected. Her discoveries during her time as a student, a teacher, and an astronomer paved the way for many others, not just in Science, but also for woman’s rights and potential to be seen.
“Charles is a short story written by Shirley Jackson that tells about a mischievous young boy named Laurie, who was beginning kindergarten. The literary work takes place in the 1950s between home and school. Laurie misbehaved because he was struggling to adjust to his new surroundings. He was a brother to a younger sibling who received the majority of attention from his parents. Consequentially, he was troublesome to the faculty. Therefore, he was able to share such stories about the school day’s events to lure his mother and father in interest. However, this caused a rise of disrespectful and inappropriate behavior.
Bessie Coleman was the first African American pilot, & it wasn’t exactly a piece of cake. Back then in the United States African Americans were treated like dirt, which is the reason why every flying school Bessie Coleman tried to enroll in rejected her enrollment. However, that did not stop her from her dream of flying. She saved up enough money to travel to France & enroll in a flying school there, & she got in. In 1921, she earned her international Pilot’s license. In 1923, she got into a plane crash & broke her leg & three legs, & a year later she was flying again, only to die in another crash in 1926. The article taught me that life is full of ups & downs, don’t lose
It is only in the past few years that the notable accomplishments or assists by African-Americans in have been acknowledged as they have previously been unknown or credited to another person. Like many others, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson were not known to many even those who are knowledged in US space history. Until Katherine’s importance was realised, Katherine Johnson had not been given the permission to include her own name in reports she had written and had unwillingly only credited Paul Stafford, the head engineer of the Space Task Group at NASA. Additionally, though the soundtrack was quite limited, the performances were engaging and the cinematography was stunning.
In the movie Hidden Figures, based on a true story, the three main actors Taraji P. Henson (Katherine Johnson), Octavia Spencer (Dorothy Vaughan) & Janelle Monae (Mary Jackson) play the role of three intelligent African American women who served as the mathematical brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: sending an astronaut into orbit. These three women and many more alongside them were known as “human computers” as they calculated the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit and guaranteed his safe return back to Earth.
Mae Jemison was the first African American to go to space. Not only was she the first African American she was also the first woman ever to travel to space. She graduated from Stanford University, the fourth best college in The United States of America. She joined the Peace Corps and worked as the medical officer in Sierra Leone and Liberia. These are just a few of her many accomplishments making her
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of famous poet at the time, Lord George Gordon Byron, and mother Anne Isabelle Milbanke, known as “the princess of parallelograms,” a mathematician. A few weeks after Ada Lovelace was born, her parents split. Her father left England and never returned. Women received inferior education that that of a man, but Isabelle Milbanke was more than able to give her daughter a superior education where she focused more on mathematics and science (Bellis). When Ada was 17, she was introduced to Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician who’s party she heard Charles Babbage’s idea of the Analytic Engine, a new calculating engine (Toole). Charles Babbage, known as the father of computer invented the different calculators. Babbage became a mentor to Ada and helped her study advance math along with Augustus de Morgan, who was a professor at the University of London (Ada Lovelace Biography Mathematician, Computer Programmer (1815–1852)). In 1842, Charles Babbage presented in a seminar in Turin, his new developments on a new engine. Menabrea, an Italian, wrote a summary article of Babbage’s developments and published the article i...