Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson
Shirley Ann Jackson was the first Black woman to earn a PhD from MIT, in 1973, in theoretical physics. She did it largely alone, in a department that did not want her there, with colleagues who refused to work with her in her first two years. Her research at Bell Laboratories contributed to the development of caller ID, call waiting, the portable fax machine, fiber optic cables, and solar cells. She later became president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the first Black woman to chair the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Shirley Ann Jackson grew up in Washington, D.C., where she was encouraged by her parents to pursue academics. She enrolled at MIT in 1964, one of fewer than twenty Black students in the school and one of two Black women. She would spend the next nine years there earning both her undergraduate and doctoral degrees.
The environment was hostile. Other physics students refused to study with her in her first two years. She was often ignored during labs. She kept going, in part because a group of Black MIT students organized to support each other and, in part, because she was simply that good at physics.
She earned her PhD in theoretical elementary particle physics in 1973, becoming the first Black woman ever to earn a doctorate from MIT. She was also only the second Black American woman in history to earn a physics PhD in the United States.
She joined Bell Laboratories, the research division of AT&T, in 1976. Working in condensed matter physics and optical physics, her research contributed to the scientific foundation for technologies that now define daily life: caller ID, call waiting, the portable fax machine, fiber optic cables used in telecommunications, and the photovoltaic cells that make solar panels work. She did not invent these products herself, but her foundational research made them possible.
In 1995, President Clinton appointed her chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees the safety of civilian nuclear facilities in America. She was the first Black person and the first woman to hold that position. In 1999, she became president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one of the oldest technology-focused research universities in the world, where she remains today.
Physics is the basis of all science. And it is beautiful. It reveals the structure of the universe.Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson
She earned the highest physics degree in America's most prestigious technical institution while being actively excluded by her classmates for two years. She did not have the community other physicists had. She built her record anyway. The technologies that came from her foundational research are now used by billions of people, most of whom have never heard her name.
Shirley Ann Jackson is a direct refutation of the argument that Black women were not interested in or capable of the hardest technical fields. She excelled in theoretical particle physics, which is about as hard as physics gets, in an environment specifically designed not to support her. Then she applied that same discipline to institutional leadership at the highest levels.
She is also a reminder that foundational scientific research, the work that happens before any product is made, is often invisible. The technologies her work enabled are everywhere. Her name almost nowhere. That gap is precisely what this project exists to close.