Dr. Shirley Jackson

Have you watched something on a streaming platform like Netflix, Prime or Apple TV lately?

Have you connected a device to a Wi-Fi connection?

Do you ever look to see who’s calling before you answer your phone?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these, then you used something made possible by the breakthrough scientific research of Dr. Shirley Jackson. To be clear, Dr. Jackson didn’t invent fiber optic cables (used for streaming) or caller I.D. But her breakthroughs in telecommunications research led to those inventions, as well as the invention of the portable fax machine, touch-tone telephone, solar cells, and call waiting

Born August 5, 1946, she was described by her parents as a curious child and they encouraged her curiosity, helping her design experiments and build projects. Long before she earned her “Dr.”, she began taking advanced math and science classes in high school and set her sights on Massachusetts Insititute of Technology (MIT).

She arrived at MIT in the fall of 1964 just a few months after the Civil Rights Bill had been signed into law. She was one of a handful of Black students (historically 3 – 5 Black students per year) in that year’s freshman class was not welcomed by the other women freshmen.

“It was pretty isolating,” Jackson says of her undergraduate years. Students avoided sitting next to her in lecture halls. If she joined others in the dining room, they would generally finish faster or skip their dessert. When that freshman study group rejected her, she went back to her room and cried. But after a while she told herself, “Well, I do have to hand in these physics problems.” So, she says, “I got myself together and finished the work.”¹

But she didn’t give up. She continued her studies and earned her Bachelor’s degree in 1968. Five years later, in 1973, she became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate at the Massachusetts Insititute of Technology (MIT) in any field. For most of her undergraduate years, she focused on academics. But, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the spring of 1968 changed that.

She realized she was in a position to help open MIT’s doors to more minorities and women. “She helped organize a group of African-American students that ultimately became the Black Student Union. The group drafted proposals (they thought better of calling them “demands”) to recruit more minority students, support them financially, improve their life at MIT, and hire more minority faculty members.”²

To help make these “suggestions” reality, she spent part of her first year of grad school traveling the Midwest to help MIT recruit Black students. And the effort was a success. The next fall, 57 Black freshmen enrolled. And to help those students succeed, she helped create Project Interphase which provided those incoming freshmen with both academic support and guidance on how things worked on campus.

After graduation, Dr. Bell went on to work at Bell Laboratories and in 1991 joined the faculty at Rutgers University. In 1994 President Bill Clinton asked her to serve as chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, making her the first Black person to serve in that role. In 1999 she returned to academics by becoming the president of the Reselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Other accomplishments:

2001 Becomes the first Black woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering
2002 Discover magazine named her one of the 50 most important women in science
2004 Serves as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
2009 Appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
2016 Awarded National Medal of Science for work in condensed matter and particle physics, science-rooted public policy achievements, and inspiration to the next generation of STEM professionals.
2021 recipient of the esteemed Hans Christian Oersted Medal presented by the American Association of Physics Teachers