Engineering Includes Me: Dr Ronald McNair
Ronald McNair (1950-1986) was an American NASA Astronaut, Physicist and second African American in space. He is an inspirational figure and a pioneer in the increasingly diverse astronaut corps we see today.
Dr McNair was nominated by Jeff Barrie, Senior Lecturer, School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering
Nomination
The Engineering Includes Me Wall
Staff and students were invited to
nominate inspirational people in STEM
from marginalised or underrepresented
backgrounds. We commissioned eight
artworks for our shared spaces to
showcase and celebrate role models
from the faculty and beyond.
Ronald McNair was an American NASA Astronaut and Physicist, and was the second African American in space. McNair’s life was tragically cut short, aged 35, along with the other six crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger which exploded shortly after launch in 1986. He was married with two children. A lot of focus of the space challenger disaster is around the circumstances of the event and not so much on the people who lost their lives and their families.
As a child, Ronald refused to leave his public library (which was segregated at the time), and a fictionalised account of this event is written in ‘Ron’s Big Mission’, an inspiring book for children. McNair’s interest in science was matched with his love of music. He was an accomplished saxophone player, and played the instrument in zero gravity in 1984. McNair had collaborated with French musician and composer, Jean Michel Jarre to record a saxophone solo on board the Challenger, which would have made it the first original piece of music to have been recorded in space. Tragically, this never came to be and the track “Last Rendez-Vous,” has the subtitle “Ron’s Piece,” in memory of the talented astronaut, physicist and musician.