Dr Shirley Jackson

“Shirley the Great. “That’s what Shirley Ann Jackson, age 4, declared to her mother she would someday be called.

Born Shirley Ann Jackson, August 5, 1946, in Washington, DC; daughter of Beatrice and George Jackson; married to Dr. Morris A. Washington; one son, Alan. Education : B.S.in physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1968, Ph.D. in physics, MIT, 1973; postdoctoral education at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL. and European Center for Nuclear Research, Geneva, Switzerland.
Career: Condensed matter theorist and other positions, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J, 1976-91; consultant, semiconductor theory, Bell Labs, 1991-95; physics professor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 1991-95; commissioner and chairman, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, May 1995-.
Directorships: NJ. Resources Corp., Public Service Enterprise Group, Sealed Air Corp, Corestates New Jersey National Bank, CoreStates Financial Corp.

In 1964 she was one of 45 women and a handful of African Americans in her 900-member freshman class. Jackson was unprepared for the loneliness, she told Science magazine. “The irony is that the white girls weren’t particularly working with me, either,” she said. The white women even refused to sit at the same cafeteria table with her and made it clear they didn’t want her in their study groups. “I had to work alone,” Jackson said.  


“I went through a down period, but at some level you have to decide you will persist in what you’re doing and that you won’t let people beat you down.”


Jackson conducted successful experiments in theoretical physics and used her knowledge of physics to foster advances in telecommunications research while working at Bell Laboratories. Dr. Jackson conducted breakthrough basic scientific research that enabled others to invent the portable fax, touch tone telephone, solar cells, fiber optic cables, and the technology behind caller ID and call waiting 

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