What a pity that insight was denied to the rest of us – until now. The story of a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the. “As a child, I grew up knowing so many black people in science, math, and engineering that I thought that was just what black folks did …” Her father worked at NASA-Langley Research Centre and she knew many of the “hidden figures”. Shetterly, herself African American, grew up in a scientific household. A movie, based on the book, is due for release in 2017. Their story has been brilliantly told by Margot Lee Shetterly, drawing on the personal recollections of the “computers”, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, as well as correspondence and reporting from the time. Johnson and other bright female African American mathematicians at the agency, including Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, might have had their eyes on the stars but on Earth they were forced to stay apart from their white co-workers. Her job was as a computer – in those days a person, not a machine – calculating the flight paths for space flights, including that of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, in 1959 the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon and vital calculations to get the Apollo 13 crew safely home.īut in the 1950s, with Jim Crow firmly in place, segregation was a way of life. ' Hidden Figures ,' set to premiere in January 2017, is based on the true story of Katherine Johnson and other black women whose calculations put Americans in space for the first time. In 1953, Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who was the first African American woman to attend the graduate school at West Virginia University, was offered a job at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics – the agency that was to become NASA. But it is also shocking that the history behind Hidden Figures has never been told before. What a pleasure it is to come across an unknown story and for that story to be both true and uplifting. 1When the movie Hidden Figures hit theaters in December 2016, few Americans had ever heard of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, or any of. Hidden Figures tells the incredible untold story of Katherine G. The movie features outstanding performances and pays tribute to three pioneering Black women who played a. Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race Its a story of greatness demanding acknowledgement.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |