GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: MARY GOLDA ROSS, 1908-2008. Mary Golda Ross was the first Native American woman to become an engineer. The great-granddaughter of a Cherokee Chief, she grew up in the Cherokee tradition, which educated boys and girls equally. She graduated from 1/x

Northeastern State Teacher's College, which was formerly the Cherokee Female Seminary, with a degree in mathematics at age 20. She spent 9 years teaching in rural Oklahoma schools during the Great Depression, taking courses towards her master's degree during summers. She went 2/x

to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a statistician, then to California to seek work with Lockheed in support of US efforts during WW2. She did mathematical work on pressure effects for fighter planes, including the P-38 Lightning, then the fastest military plane ever. 3/x

After the war, Lockheed kept her on--which was unusual for a company to do with women employees--and sent her to UCLA for certification as an engineer. In 1952, Lockheed made her one of the 40 founding engineers of its Missile Systems Division. She was also in "Skunk Works," 4/x

a small "guerilla group" within the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. It did work on space travel possibilities, and much of its work is still classified. She was both the only woman engineer and the only Native American. In 1958, she appeared on the TV show "What's My Line," 5/x

in an episode with Jack Lemmon and Andy Griffith (link to YouTube in final tweet of this thread). In the 1960s, she became a senior advanced systems staff engineer. Retiring from Lockheed in 1973, she spent the rest of her life advancing causes she believed in, including the 6/x

promotion of education and opportunities for Native Americans, and the Society of Women Engineers, of which she was both Fellow and a Life Member. Her honors and awards are numerous, with some of the most memorable being: she is featured on a $1 coin. (The US Mint had to work 7/x

to get a non-classified equation to use in the design.) She is also featured on an iconic painting that hangs in the Smithsonian. At age 96, in Cherokee dress, she helped open the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. She died a few months shy of turning 100.

YouTube link to her "What's My Line" appearance from 1958: