Mary Ross was the first Native American, and first woman engineer to work for NASA. Mary was a tribal member of the Cherokee Nation. Born in 1908, in Park Hill, Oklahoma and rasied in Tahlequah, the Capital of the Cherokee Nation. Mary is also the 3x great granddaughter of Principal Chief John Ross, who lead the Cherokee Nation from before the Trail of Tears, until just before the Civil War. Mary had a talent for mathematics and went to college in Tahlequah, Oklahoma at Northeastern State University, and received a teaching degree. Later she received her Masters at the University of Northern Colorado.
WWII had just began and her father suggested she move to California to find an engineering job. She found one at Lockheed Martin, designing rockets. Her supervisor realized how talented she was, and sent her to NASA. She was one of a group of the first 40 engineers hired. She joined the Advanced Development Program in 1952 and worked on preliminary design concepts for interplanetary space travel, manned and unmanned earth-orbiting flights, and the earliest studies of orbiting satellites for both defense and civilian purposes. She was also a highly valued member of the first moon landing. She said she was able to survive in a normally male only career, because the Cherokee had always believed in equal rights for women and encouraged women to go to college. She accomplished all those amazing things before women's rights, or the civil rights bill had been passed. She couldn't even vote yet in some states.
Her father said Mary learned to read at three, by listening in on her two older sisters,' reading leasons. She was a natural born genius. She passed away on April 29, 2008, four months short of her 100 year birthday.