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Engineering's First Lady
2001 Black Engineer of the Year
Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D.
President
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
By Garland L. Thompson
Students say that physics is the science that drives engineering. Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, a theoretical physicist with a long string of "first" behind her name, is a driver of engineering development, here and around the world.
In her current role as chief executive of the oldest technological university in the U.S., she runs an institution with 4,800 undergraduates and 4,300 graduate students pursuing bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, management, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences. She also is on the board of trustees of her alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As the first African American on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, beginning in the early 1990s, and first to head the agency, Dr. Jackson crisscrossed the nation, reviewing troubled nuclear facilities and unsnarling knotty environmental-safety issues, while also bringing down the temperature of critical debates about community acceptance of nuclear power.
But physicist Jackson's reach into technology began well before she joined the NRC. The theoretical work which led to her becoming the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. at MIT, in any discipline, took her to AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1976. For 15 years there, the practical effects of her explorations in solid-state physics worked out in rapid improvements in the signal-handling capabilities of semiconductor devices. That helped keep Bell Laboratories in the forefront of the rapidly advancing field of electronic communications.
Dr. Jackson, who continued her education with summer theoretical courses in Erice, Sicily, and l'Ecole d'ete de Physique Theoretique at Les Houches, France, during the mid-1970s, also served as a lecturer at the Advanced Study Institute run by NATO at Antwerp, Belgium. She lectured at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, in California, and served as a visiting scientist at the Aspen Center for Physics, Aspen, Colo.
As if that were not enough, Dr. Jackson also began a course of development in public policy roles. A member of MIT's board since 1975, she joined the board of the nation's oldest historically Black university, Lincoln University, Pa., in 1980. Five years later, she was on the Executive Committee, where she remained until 1992. Rutgers University's Board of Trustees also welcomed her membership, in 1986, and she moved up, in 1990, to the Board of Governors, serving on the Educational Planning and Policy Committee. In 1993, she joined the board of Associated Universities, Inc., operator of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. She joined the board of the Brookings Institution, in June 2000.
From 1980-95, she promoted the advancement of women in science as a member of the National Research Council's Committee on the Education and Employment of Women in Science and Engineering and its Committee on Women in Science & Engineering and has served as a member, board member, or officer of other scientific organizations too numerous to mention.
Meanwhile, her technical research continued at a furious pace. A list of her publications includes 44 articles.
Dr. Jackson, who also has continued active teaching duties during her career, was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, in 1998, and won the National Society of Black Engineers' Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia, in March 2000.
This could go on, but since Dr. Jackson never stops, the list would just keep on growing.
Garland L. Thompson is assistant managing editor of The Philadelphia Tribune and a member of the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Selection Panel. He can be reached at GThompson@ccgmag.com.