Ronald E. McNair was an African American physicist and NASA astronaut. Born in Lake City, South Carolina, in 1950, he earned a physics degree at North Carolina A&T State University and a doctorate in physics at MIT. His research explored lasers and the use of electro-optic modulation for satellite communications, work on ways to carry information using light.
Selected by NASA in 1978, McNair flew aboard Challenger on STS-41B in February 1984. As a mission specialist, he operated the shuttle's Canadarm, performed experiments and handled Cinema 360 filming. An accomplished saxophonist, he also played his instrument during off-duty time aboard the spacecraft.
McNair's road to MIT ran through the segregated South. He grew up in Lake City, South Carolina, and studied physics at North Carolina A&T State University, a historically Black university, before completing his doctorate at MIT, where his work centered on lasers, then a young and fast-moving technology.
The shuttle's science missions needed astronauts who could run experiments the way a laboratory scientist would: adjusting instruments, recording data and troubleshooting equipment in orbit. McNair's laser background fit that role, and on STS-41B he operated the Canadarm, the robotic arm that lifted payloads in and out of the cargo bay. That flight also tested new equipment, including a jet backpack that let an astronaut fly free of the spacecraft. On January 28, 1986, Challenger broke apart about a minute after launch, and the accident halted shuttle flights for more than two years. McNair was 35.
The investigation traced the accident to a failed joint in one of the solid rocket boosters, and the findings reshaped the program's engineering oversight. The mission he was flying also carried Christa McAuliffe, the teacher chosen to bring education into orbit.
McNair's name is now attached to schools and scholarship programs, including the federal Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, which prepares undergraduates for doctoral study.
In South Carolina, the story of a young McNair refusing to leave the town library until he was allowed to check out books became part of how his hometown remembers him.
