Mary Gold Ross
The confidential aerospace engineer Mary Gold Ross, who was born in the town of Park Hill in the US state of Oklahoma in 1908. She was an extraordinary girl; during that era, specifically at the beginning of the twentieth century, all girls were heading toward homemaking. Mary was completely the opposite, interested in numbers and logic despite the belief that it was a field for men. Mary belonged to the indigenous people (Cherokee), and her great-grandfather was the chief justice of the tribe, which made her more believing and determined to pursue education and achieve her passion in STEM fields.
Due to the strength of her passion for mathematics, Mary joined Northeastern State Teachers College in Oklahoma and obtained her bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1928 at the age of twenty. Mary completed her educational journey while adapting to difficult circumstances and the Great Depression, earning her master's degree in mathematics in 1938 at the age of 30 from the University of Northern Colorado. Because of this advanced degree, she secured a professional opportunity at Lockheed Corporation in 1942 during World War II.
Her knowledge of mathematics contributed to solving physical and dynamic problems, and through this, Mary proved her genius in the design and development of the P-38 Lightning aircraft, which was one of the best and most powerful fighter planes that decided many battles in that era. Mary studied the impact of altitudes and airspeeds on the aircraft's structure, setting mathematical equations to ensure the safety of pilots and the thrust power of engines. Her genius caught the attention of senior engineering leaders in the company.
Because of her remarkable genius, Mary was chosen for a classified mission to found the top-secret research and development department affiliated with Lockheed Corporation, known as Skunk Works, in 1943, where she was the only female among 39 engineers.
In a laboratory surrounded by complete secrecy, Mary was tasked with setting the first design criteria for interplanetary space flights, where she undertook the formulation of algorithms, trajectories, and mathematical calculations to determine how to launch rockets by calculating the Earth's gravitational forces so that vehicles could fly in astronomical orbits with the goal of exploring the planets Mars and Venus without getting lost in space or burning up upon entering the atmosphere.
Her contributions did not stop at the boundaries of space; she also contributed to a project that completely changed the course of modern warfare, which was experimentation with stealth shapes and how to make an aircraft invisible to radar. In this project, she was not working on designing an ordinary airplane, but rather re-engineering atmospheric physics. Mary worked on highly complex physical and engineering equations studying how radar waves bounce off metal surfaces, and she devised precise engineering equations to design sharp angles and special curves that scatter these electromagnetic waves or absorb them entirely instead of reflecting them back to enemy devices. This magnificent scientific invention of stealth aircraft technology, which cannot be detected by radar devices, is the engineering breakthrough that immortalized her name as a living icon in STEM fields, and earned her the well-deserved title of an aerospace engineer of the highest caliber.
Mary continued her career for a span of three decades inside Lockheed Corporation, working with supreme secrecy until she retired in 1973 at the age of 65. However, Mary did not stop; she worked as a supporter of the community and education, leading campaigns to support and encourage girls, youth, minorities, and indigenous people in STEM fields and providing scholarships for them.
Mary Gold Ross passed away on April 29, 2008, at the age of 99. In honor of her eternal historic legacy as the first female aerospace engineer from the indigenous population, her image was memorialized inside the National Museum of the American Indian, affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Her image was also placed on the US coin dollar dedicated to science in 2019.
