Working in Secret
Mary Golda Ross was born in 1908 in Park Hill, Oklahoma, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the great-granddaughter of Principal Chief John Ross. She finished a mathematics degree at Northeastern State Teachers' College in 1928, taught math and science in rural Oklahoma schools, and later earned a master's degree in mathematics in 1938.
In 1942, as World War II increased demand for technical workers, Lockheed hired her as a mathematician. She worked on problems the P-38 Lightning, a very fast fighter plane, encountered in high-speed dives. Lockheed kept her on after the war and supported her while she took engineering courses through UCLA to earn a professional engineering certification.
In 1952 she joined the Skunk Works, Lockheed's secret advanced-projects group, as the only woman among its original team of about 40 engineers. Her work turned to orbital mechanics — the math of how objects move around planets. She contributed to requirements for the Agena rocket, which later served as a docking target for NASA's Gemini astronauts, and helped write parts of NASA's Planetary Flight Handbook about travel to Mars and Venus.
Because so much of her work was classified, she rarely spoke about it publicly. After retiring from Lockheed in 1973, she encouraged girls and Native students to study engineering, supporting the Society of Women Engineers and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. In 2019 she was honored on the U.S. Mint's Native American $1 coin.
