Shirley Ann Jackson

Shirley Ann Jackson (born August 5, 1946) is an African American physicist and the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the first African American woman to earn a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics. She is also the second African American woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in physics.

Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and attended Roosevelt Senior High School. After graduation in 1964, she enrolled at MIT to study theoretical physics, earning her B.S. degree in 1968.
Jackson elected to… More on Wikipedia →