Hailing from the small West Virginian town of White Sulphur Springs, she graduated from high school at 14 and the historically black West Virginia State University at 18. Katherine Johnson, the movie's protagonist, was something of a child prodigy. Hidden Figures depicts this in a scene in which "computer" Mary Jackson is asked if she's want to be an engineer if she were a white man. They became known as the "West Computers." Despite having the same education, they had to retake college courses they had already passed and were often never considered for promotions or other jobs within NACA. While they did the same work as their white counterparts, African-American computers were paid less and relegated to the segregated west section of the Langley campus, where they had to use separate dining and bathroom facilities.
into the throes of war, NACA and Langley began recruiting African-American women with college degrees to work as human computers. Six months later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. First he issued Executive Order 8802, which banned "discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin" (though it does not include gender).
In June 1941, with war raging in Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt looked to ensure the growth of the federal workforce. and they didn't have to pay them very much," NASA's historian Bill Barry says, explaining the NACA's decision. In 1935, the NACA ( National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a precursor to NASA) hired five women to be their first computer pool at the Langley campus. While working six-day weeks at a job demanding "a large capacity for tedium," they were still expected to uphold societal norms of being a good wife and mother. Williamina Fleming, for instance, classified over 10,000 stars using a scheme she created and was the first to recognize the existence of white dwarfs. As chronicled in Dava Sobel's book The Glass Universe, these women were every bit as capable as men despite toiling under less-than-favorable conditions. In the late 19th century, the Harvard College Observatory employed a group of women who collected, studied, and cataloged thousands of images of stars on glass plates. Women working as so-called "human computers" dates back decades before space exploration.
KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA COMPUTER MOVIE
It didn't win those categories, but did take home Best Movie at the BET Awards, Outstanding Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards, Best Action or Adventure Film at the Saturn Awards, and other accolades. 21, 2016 Hidden Figures was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Through sheer tenacity, force of will, and intellect, they ensured their stamp on American history-even if their story has remained obscured from public view until now.Įditor's note: After we published this story on Dec. It’s the same.Adapted from 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, the film focuses on three real-life African-American female pioneers: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who were part of NASA's team of human "computers." This was a group made up of mostly women who calculated by hand the complex equations that allowed space heroes like Neil Armstrong, Alan Shepard, and Glenn to travel safely to space. If I gave you that answer last year, it’s the same now. And it was a joy to contribute to the literature that was going to be coming out.īut you know, math is the same. I like the stars and the stories we were telling. The main thing is I liked what I was doing. I didn’t do anything alone but try to go to the root of the question – and succeeded there. Her calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landings and the start of the Space Shuttle program. Katherine continued to work at NASA until 1986. But when they went to computers, they called over and said, "Tell her to check and see if the computer trajectory they had calculated was correct." So I checked it, and it was correct. You could do much more, much faster on the computer.
You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll do it backward and tell you when to take off." That was my forte.Įven after NASA had electronic computers, John Glenn requested that Katherine personally recheck the computer calculations before his 1962 Friendship 7 flight – the first American mission to orbit Earth. As a human computer, Katherine calculated the trajectory for astronaut Alan Shepard’s 1961 Freedom 7 mission to space – the first spaceflight for an American.Įarly on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start.
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