Mary Golda Ross

First Native American female engineer

Mary Golda Ross's early work with Lockheed Corporation paved the way for space exploration and travel for years to come.

Mary Golda Ross, a member of the Cherokee Nation, was born in Park Hill, Oklahoma in 1908. Her hometown had the first institution for women’s higher education west of the Mississippi River. It’s original name was the Cherokee Female Seminary but is now known as Northeastern State University. This school specialized in the sciences and had a tradition of equal education for boys and girls. Mary received her first degree in mathematics in 1928 from there.

During the Great Depression, Mary taught math in rural Oklahoma, worked in statistics for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and was an advisor to girls at the Santa Fe Indian Boarding School in Arizona. While working on her Master’s degree in mathematics, Mary picked up an interest in astronomy. In 1942, Mary moved to California to work for Lockheed Corporation. She worked as a mathematician on the P-38 Lightning fighter planes. After some time with the company, they sent her to UCLA to receive a certificate in aeronautical engineering which allowed her to take on engineering projects.

In a newspaper article about her, Mary told the reporter,

“I think of myself as applying mathematics in a fascinating field.” Mary Golda Ross, 1961

During her time at Lockheed, Mary was part of the company’s Advanced Development Programs, also known as Skunk Works, a then-top-secret group of 40 who were integral during the Space Race. Mary was the only female on this team and the only Native American. Much of the work Mary did with this group is still classified information.

The complicated math that Mary did for her job is called orbital mechanics. Today, these calculations are completed by a computer program, though Mary and her colleagues were the original computers.

Mary retired from Lockheed in 1973 and died a few months before her 100^th birthday in 2008. In 2019, the U.S. Mint began distribution of a dollar coin dedicated to Mary Golda Ross. The coin shows Mary writing and includes an equation that was chosen by Willis Jenkins to honor the impact of Mary’s work.

Mary Golda Ross: Ad Astra per Astra by Cherokee artist America Meredith, 2011. Acrylic on canvas. Ad Astra per Astra means “to the starts form the stars” and references a Cherokee origin story of how humans arrived on Earth from the Pleiades.