The words "first black woman" have been used to describe Shirley Ann Jackson for so long that her name seems incomplete without them. She was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. from MIT, the first black woman in the country to earn a physics doctorate, and she was both the first African American and the first woman to chair the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the race for space was in full force, a young Jackson came to see the world around her as "full of secrets ". For years, she collected bees and kept them under her family's back porch, making painstaking records of their behaviors as she adjusted variables like heat, light, and diet. "It was like reading a great mystery novel," she recalls.
Her parents encouraged her to pursue her passions, and her siblings, two sisters and a brother, all recognized her natural talents for leadership. But it was the assistant principal at Washington D.C.'s Roosevelt High School who steered her toward MIT. Today, even at such lofty posts as heading the NRC, Jackson says she is essentially doing the same thing she did way back with the bees: studying interactions in the environment around her, making keen observation, and taking constructive action based on what she learned.
Jackson strongly believes that women must be "true friends" to one another and assist and encourage one another in their efforts. From her youngest days, she took time to tutor fellow women and minority students in their studies. That's because, says Jackson, being a trailblazer (开路先锋) is only a good thing if one does not allow "high weeds" to grow back because no one was inspired to follow. Jackson won't be satisfied to go down in history as the "first black woman" of anything unless the familiar phrase is followed by two more words: "of many."