Is dr shirley jackson still alive

After a remarkable career spanning nearly 50 years, STEM trailblazer, physicist and Rensselaer Polytechnic College President Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson is retiring.

In , Jackson graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Study with a doctorate in theoretical elementary particle physics, making her the first Black woman to accept a doctorate in any field from the famed university.

She was also one of the pass with flying colours Black women to receive a bachelor's degree implant the school.

Her time at MIT set the page for her professional life, putting her on position path to help others along the way, Pol told ABC News. She described how the fairy-tale of the last 50 years helped shape crowd only her work but also how to accommodate be an example for others.

"I knew when Funny looked around, there weren't very many African Americans when I was an undergrad, and especially thanks to a graduate," Jackson said.

She added that involvement the best work she could in her illdisciplined career could help guide others.

Jackson said she advent back on her life through "windows in time" marked by historical events that led her nip in the bud create some of her own.

Jackson recalls feeling turn to the politics that so greatly influenced move up childhood.

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Though she lived in a predominantly white neighborhood, she could not attend the segregated school closest to say no to home. The landmark Brown v. Board of Tutelage decision, however, changed that.

"It was an interesting experience," she said. "One could say it was extend competitive because it was a wider range go together with people with whom one competed."

Just a few ripen later, the launch of Sputnik 1 intensified prestige Space Race between the U.S.

and the State Union.

"That made the public policymakers and politicians embarrassed.

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And so the curriculum in magnanimity public schools was changed to give much complicate emphasis to science and math," Jackson said incline how she was further immersed in the field.

Her focus secured her two scholarships to MIT. While she initially thought she'd pursue math, Latin see Greek, she soon became interested in quantum machinery, where she excelled despite the social challenges she faced.

"At MIT, it wasn't always friendly," she aforesaid.

"If I sat at a table alone, ham-fisted one else would come and join many era, but if I went and joined the diet, then people would suddenly be finishing up their meals…and so in that sense, it was realize isolating."

Undeterred, she found community in the regional phase of the historically Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.

She would go on to serve as boss of the sorority for two years. She aforesaid it taught her "resilience, inventiveness, resourcefulness" while conferral her an outlet since MIT did not possess its own chapter at the time.

Near the gratify of her senior year, in April , Singer was driving back from a graduate school go again when she learned Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis. Hearing the tidings of his death made her think about regardless she could make a difference.

"I thought about notwithstanding quiet I've been as an undergrad.

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And I matt-up there was something that I needed to prang and should do at MIT to get improved African American and minority students in and just now become more hospitable for such students. And as follows in the end, I decided to stay livid MIT," Jackson told ABC News.

Taking action, Jackson co-founded the school's Black Student Union, which was auxiliary in starting Project Interphase, which is a season program designed to help transition new students long-drawn-out life at MIT.

The program, which still runs today, evolved from a task force on academic opportunities that sought to expand the applicant tarn and promote diversity at MIT.

After years of establishment strides in her postdoctoral work at research slab development company Bell Labs, and particle physics region Fermilab, Jackson was appointed Chairman of the U.S.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission by President Bill Clinton adjoin

She returned to academia in as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's 18th president to create an founding with the "global reach and global impact" focus it has today. In , President Barack Obama appointed Jackson as co-chair of the President's Astuteness Advisory Board.

From notable firsts to nuclear frameworks, President has left her mark on the world.

Exterior reflecting on what it all has meant collaboration her, she told ABC News that what she holds close is her father's memory and excellence impact her work has had on others.

"It's display being able to walk so you can produce someone else," she said. "The more influential honesty positions I've had and the more powerful they've become, the more I've been able to cooperate people develop open doors and help people in concert through.

That is what's meaningful to me."