Mary Jackson (2nd ed.)

She was the first Black female engineer at NASA, but her astounding story begins well before that. She was a human computer. An African-American woman born in 1921 in Virginia, Jackson overcame many obstacles and setbacks before getting a job at an organization that would later be renamed NASA. Although she never went into space herself, her skills as a mathematician and then as an engineer made it possible for America's astronauts to soar to the heavens, orbit the Earth, and fly to the moon and