There were mathematicians at our church, sonic boom experts in my mother’s sorority and electrical engineers in my parents’ college alumni associations. Our next door neighbor was a physics professor. My father’s best friend was an aeronautical engineer. Five of my father’s seven siblings were engineers or technologists. My dad was a NASA lifer, a career Langley Research Center scientist who became an internationally respected climate expert. Just do an image search for the word “scientist”.įor me, growing up in Hampton, Virginia, the face of science was brown like mine. Even Google, our hive mind, confirms the prevailing view.
We all know what a scientist looks like: a wild-eyed person in a white lab coat and utilitarian eyeglasses, wearing a pocket protector and holding a test tube. HIDDEN FIGURES: THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BLACK WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS WHO HELPED WIN THE SPACE RACE recovers the history of these pioneering women and situates it in the intersection of the defining movements of the American century: the Cold War, the Space Race, the Civil Rights movement and the quest for gender equality. What about Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith or Barbara Holley? Most Americans have no idea that from the 1940s through the 1960s, a cadre of African-American women formed part of the country’s space work force, or that this group-mathematical ground troops in the Cold War-helped provide NASA with the raw computing power it needed to dominate the heavens.
Sloan Foundation Fellow.You've heard the names John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong. She graduated from The University of Hampton, and is a 2014 Alfred P. Along with Aran Shetterly, Shetterly co-founded the magazine Inside Mexico. She grew up around the historically black Hampton College, where the women in Hidden Figures studied. Shetterly’s father was among the early generation of black NASA engineers and scientists, and she had direct access to NASA executives and the women featured in the book. Shetterly is also the founder of the Human Computer Project, a digital archive of the stories of NASA’s African-American “Human Computers” whose work tipped the balance in favor of the United States in WWII, the Cold War, and the Space Race. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. A highly anticipated film based on her book will be released in January 2017. Writer, researcher, and entrepreneur Margot Lee Shetterly is the author of Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Margot Lee Shetterly is a Top 100 Bestselling Author Making Our List 11 Times
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