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. You've heard the names John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly