Christine Darden is a Aerospace engineer and mathematician who was responsible for developing the sonic boom research program at NASA.

Darden was one of many data analysts working at NASA known as ‘human computers’ featured in Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016)

In 1989, Darden was appointed as the technical leader of NASA’s Sonic Boom Group of the Vehicle Integration Branch of the High Speed Research Program where she was responsible for developing the sonic boom research program internally at NASA. She was the first African-American woman at NASA’s Langley Research Center to be promoted into the Senior Executive Service, the top rank in the federal civil service.