Mary Golda Ross never let working in a field dominated by men hinder or stop her. Instead, she excelled and became Lockheed Aircraft Co.’s first female engineer and the first known Native American female aerospace engineer.
Ross, whose great-great grandfather was Cherokee Nation Principal Chief John Ross, was born in Park Hill but went to live with her grandparents in Tahlequah to attend what were considered the best primary and secondary Cherokee schools. It proved to be a good start. Focusing on mathematics and later astronomy, she received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Early on she taught school, but Ross longed to do more, to learn more. She took the civil service exam and became a statistician for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., and later was transferred to New Mexico to advise girls at the Santa Fe Indian School. Better work opportunities lured her to California, and she was hired as a mathematician at Lockheed in 1942, where her knowledge and determination successfully propelled her career to new heights.
Ross is credited with helping solve design issues on several high-speed planes, including the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a twin-engine plane that could fly nearly 400 miles per hour. She identified a problem while studying the effects of pressure on the fighter plane and improved its aerodynamics for better stability.
After the war, many female workers at Lockheed either left or were laid off, but Ross had proven herself too valuable to be replaced. The company sent her to the University of California at Los Angeles, where she earned her engineering certification, and she became a registered professional engineer in 1949.
A few years later her career took another turn when she became the only female engineer among the 40 founding scientists and engineers of the top-secret Skunk Works, a think tank also known as Lockheed’s Advanced Development Programs. Much of Ross’ extensive work and that of Skunk Works remains a secret, though she is credited with creating various concepts for interplanetary travel, working on rocket and missile-related projects. She also wrote several academic papers on space exploration and co-authored NASA’s Planetary Flight Handbook Volume III, detailing space travel to Mars and Venus.
Ross retired in 1973 and died in 2008 at the age of 99. The U.S. Mint issued a Native American one-dollar coin featuring Ross in 2019, and a bronze statue of her was unveiled in Oklahoma City’s First Americans Museum in 2022. She was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2023.
Ross never traveled in space, but she was the woman behind many who did.
