Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson is a theoretical physicist and former president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She was the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate from MIT. She organized MIT’s Black Student Union and worked to increase the number of Black students at the school. She invented portable fax machine, touch-tone telephone, solar cells, fiber optic cables, caller ID, and call waiting. In 1965, Jackson died in her sleep at her home in North Bennington, at the age of 48. Her death was attributed to a coronary occlusion due to arteriosclerosis or cardiac arrest.