Public calculation becomes mathematical performance

Jackson moved from the West Area Computing Unit into engineering and became NASA's first Black female engineer.

Her research analyzed boundary layers, pressure and aircraft behaviour in high-speed wind tunnels.

She needed special permission to attend classes held at an all-white school, exposing how law restricted scientific careers.

She left engineering management for equal-opportunity work aimed at improving hiring and promotion routes.

The Indian mental calculator became internationally famous for rapidly performing difficult arithmetic without electronic aids.

She built authority outside a conventional academic research path, raising questions about mental skill, education and mathematical culture.

Her books included puzzles, popular mathematics and an early Indian study arguing for understanding rather than criminalizing homosexuality.

West became a mathematician and programmer whose geodetic models contributed to the technology underlying GPS.

She used satellite observations and numerical computation to refine an oblate, irregular model of the planet.

Orbit calculations, error correction and large datasets were essential long before a navigation device could report a position.