Christine Mann Darden is an internationally renowned aerospace engineer. In 1967 she became the youngest National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) data analyst and African American female mathematicians, hired by NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. She is the first African American woman at NASA appointed to the highest federal civil service rank of Senior Executive Service. Darden has authored over 57 technical reports and research papers on supersonic airplane noise and high lift wing design in supersonic flow, flap design, sonic boom prediction, and sonic boom minimization. A sonic boom is a shock wave that occurs when an aircraft or other objects gofaster than the speed of sound.
Born in Monroe, North Carolina, on September 10, 1942, Darden is the youngest of five siblings born to Noah Horace Mann, Sr., an insurance salesperson, and Desma I. Chaney, an elementary school teacher. Darden attended Winchester Avenue School in Monroe and spent her final two years of high school at the Allen School for Negro Girls, a Methodist boarding school in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1958, Darden graduated as class valedictorian and enrolled with a scholarship at Hampton Institute. In 1962, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate in mathematics from Hampton Institute, now Hampton University.
In 1963, Darden’s first jobs were as teacher at Russell High School in Lawrenceville, Virginia, and Norcom High School in Portsmouth, Virginia, where she met her husband, Walter Lee Darden, Jr., a middle school science teacher. Their union produced two daughters, Janet and Jeanne. They have one-step daughter, Mary. In 1965, Darden became a research assistant in physics at Virginia State College. Two years later, she completed a Master’s degree in applied mathematics and became a math instructor at Virginia State College, now Virginia State University.
Darden began working at NASA in 1967. By 1973, she was promoted to aerospace engineer and transferred to the High-Speed Aeronautics Division. In 1983, Darden earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from George Washington University and six years later she was promoted to technical head of the Sonic Boom Group. In 1994 was the deputy program manager of the high-speed research program.
In 1999, Dr. Darden was appointed director of the Aero Performing Center and later assistant director of the Center for Strategic Planning. After a 40-year career at NASA, Darden retired in 2007 as the strategic communications and education director. In 1987, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women honored her with the Candace Award for Science and Technology. In 1988, she received the Black Engineer of the Year Award from U.S. Black Engineer & Technology magazine publishers.
In 2016, Darden became the youngest woman featured in the book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. On September 18, 2024, she was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal under the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act for her service to the United States as an aeronautical engineer.
Darden, a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother of three, currently resides in Connecticut.
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U.S. Congress. (2019, November 8). H.R.1396 – Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act.https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1396.
S. D’Agostino. (2021, January 19). The NASA engineer who’s a mathematician at heart. Quanta Magazine.https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-nasa-engineer-whos-a-mathematician-at-heart-20210119/.
G.S. Flight Ranthony, A.C. Edmonds, and Omayra Ortega. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 68 (3)
