03/14/2023
North Carolina native Dr. Christine Darden made history as one of NASA's hidden figures as an aerospace engineer and mathematician!
Born in Monroe, N.C. (1942), Christine M. Darden graduated from high school in Asheville as the class valedictorian and received a scholarship to attend Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. There, Darden completed her B.S. degree in mathematics education and went on to earn her M.S. degree in applied mathematics from Virginia State College in 1967. She completed her doctorate in mechanical engineering from George Washington University in 1983.
At first, Darden was a mathematics teacher in Virginia high schools. However, after receiving her Master's degree, Darden became a data analyst, also known as a "human computer", for NASA, despite being qualified as an engineer. In 1973, after confronting her supervisor, she was promoted to aerospace engineer where she worked on the science of sonic booms, marking advances on sonic boom minimization and writing over 50 articles on the subject. 17 years later, she was appointed as the technical leader of NASA’s Sonic Boom Group of the Vehicle Integration Branch. A decade later, Dr. Darden became the director in the Program Management Office of the Aerospace Performing Center.
In October, 1994, Dr. Darden became the deputy program manager of The TU-144 Experiments Program, a High-Speed Research Program at NASA. She was also the director in the Program Management Office of the Aerospace Performing Center five years later. Dr. Darden served as a technical consultant for various government and private projects and is the author of more than 50 publications on high lift wing design.
Dr. Darden has received the Dr. A. T. Weathers Technical Achievement Award (1985), the Senior Executive Career Development Fellowship (1994), and the Certificate of Outstanding Performance from NASA ten times (1973 - 2003). She has won NASA medals, the 1987 Candace Award for Science and Technology, and the 1988 Black Engineer of the Year Award.
Christine Darden in the control room of NASA Langley's Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel in 1975.
Photo: Courtesy of NASA
