The search engine Google celebrated on Thursday what would have been the 110th birthday of the first Native American woman engineer. Google honored Mary Ross with a special Google Doodle on its homepage. Ross was born on August 9, 1908, in the state of Oklahoma. She was the great-granddaughter of John Ross, the longest-serving chief of the Cherokee Nation. Her work is considered critical to the early stages of the age of space travel. Ross showed special abilities in math and science from an early age. As a student, she developed an interest in aviation, or the practice of flying aircraft. She went on to earn a master’s degree in mathematics from Colorado State Teachers College, now called the University of Northern Colorado.