Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson’s Tech Legacy

Your smartphone would basically be a paperweight without Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson.

While she made history as the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. from MIT,

her work at Bell Labs is what actually changed the game. She used theoretical physics to figure

out how light and solids interact. That research became the literal blueprint for the technology

we use every single second. We are talking about the fiber optic cables that power

the internet, plus caller ID and call waiting. She studied subatomic particles and ended

up building the networks that run our entire lives.