Mary Golda Ross

Mary Golda Ross (born August 9, 1908, Park Hill, Oklahoma, U.S.—died April 29, 2008, Los Altos, California) Cherokee mathematician who was the first Native woman to work as an engineer in the U.S. space program. She made history as the first female and only Native member of a highly secret team of the Advanced Development Projects, also known as Skunk Works, at Lockheed Aircraft Company (now the Lockheed Martin Corporation). She is known for her contributions in the fields of space exploration and aerospace engineering.

Cherokee family and education

Ross was born to Mary Henrietta Moore Ross and William Wallace Ross, Jr., both citizens of the Cherokee Nation. She was the great-great-granddaughter of John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation who in the 1830s spearheaded legal actions fighting the Indian Removal Act. His efforts did not succeed, and the U.S. federal government under Pres. Andrew Jackson forcibly evicted the Cherokees from Georgia and compelled them to travel to present-day Oklahoma in what would later come to be known as the Trail of Tears.

So that Ross could attend school, her family sent her to live with her grandparents in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the former capital of the Cherokee Nation. She had several Native teachers during her time in primary school and high school, including her high-school math teacher, who was Cherokee. Ross excelled in math and science as a student, and in 1928 she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Northeastern State Teachers College (now Northeastern State University) in Tahlequah.

For about a decade after graduating, Ross taught mathematics and science in Oklahoma public schools. In 1936 she began working as a statistical clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, D.C. In 1937 the bureau assigned her to work as an adviser to girls at the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico. She continued to pursue her own education throughout this time, taking summer classes for several years and feeding her interest in astronomy. In 1938 she graduated from Colorado State College of Education (now the University of Northern Colorado) with a master’s degree in mathematics.

Career and space engineering

In 1941 Ross moved to California, just before the United States entered World War II. It had been difficult for women to find work as mathematicians and scientists in industrial laboratories, but the war increased the need for their skills, which provided Ross with an opportunity to work outside of education. In 1942 she was hired by Lockheed as a mathematician, where she concentrated on improving the design—and, specifically, the aerodynamics—of the P-38 Lightning, a fighter plane used throughout the war. After World War II ended, and men who had been part of the war effort returned to civilian life, many women struggled to keep their jobs. However, Ross’s abilities convinced Lockheed supervisors to retain her. They arranged for her to attend the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to obtain a certification in aeronautical engineering, and in 1949 she became a registered professional engineer. That made her, by many accounts, the first Native woman to become an engineer.

In 1952 Ross became one of the original members, and the only female member, of Lockheed’s Advanced Development Projects unit, popularly known as Skunk Works, which became the American aerospace industry’s leading military aircraft developer. Although the breadth of Ross’s contributions remain a secret, it is known that some of her work included creating design concepts for interplanetary travel, developing operational guidelines for spacecraft and orbiting satellites, and theorizing about the logistics of potential space travel to Mars and Venus. As Cold War tensions developed in the wake of World War II, Ross worked on several missile-related projects at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. She retired from Lockheed in 1973.

Legacy

As a key member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, Ross was known for her commitment to improving educational opportunities for women and for all Native people, especially in the field of engineering. As she recalled in an interview with Laurel M. Sheppard of Lash Publications, “There is a lot of ancient wisdom from Indian culture that would help solve the problems of today.” She also financially supported the development of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. In 2019 Ross was featured on a commemorative U.S. dollar coin that celebrates the contributions made by Native people to the U.S. space program. Ross is considered a “hidden figure,” as she is one of the female mathematicians whose contributions to American aerospace engineering have historically been unrecognized.