Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 110th birthday of Mary Golda Ross, a math prodigy who became both the first female and Native American engineer at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, where she helped develop the rocket technology that launched America into space.
Ross was born in Park Hill, Oklahoma, on August 9, 1908, and died nearly 100 years later on April 29, 2008, in Los Altos, California. She was the great-granddaughter of John Ross, the longest-serving chief of the Cherokee Nation. She said her heritage contributed to her academic success.
“I was brought up in the Cherokee tradition of equal education for boys and girls,” Ross said, according to the Cherokee Nation’s website.
After graduating from Northeastern State College in 1928 with a math degree, Ross became a high school teacher for several years