Mary G. Ross wrote her name into engineering history as a brilliant mathematician who overcame numerous social barriers.
As the first recognized Native American woman engineer, Ross was a pioneer in more ways than one. She started her career as a teacher before earning a master's degree in mathematics and going onto work for what was then the Lockheed Corporation shortly after the outbreak of World War II.
Ross was the first woman to work as a Lockheed engineer, and subsequently she was the only woman on the 40-person Skunk Works team, a secretive, exclusive group that focused on the burgeoning future of aeronautics. Ross used her ingenuity and mathematics skills to imagine a future of both unmanned and manned spaceflight, orbiting satellites for both defense and civilian purposes, and numerous rocket designs. Her efforts helped to lay the groundwork for what humans would achieve in space in the coming decades.
After retirement, Ross spent her time actively encouraging women and Native Americans to pursue engineering. Her role as a source of inspiration and innovation will continue inside the Francis Tuttle Design Thinking Studios at the Danforth Campus.