If you ever watched the movie Apollo 13, and I have many times, you would think that back then NASA was all nerdy white guys in skinny black ties. Turns out that’s not quite the case, there was a trio of brilliant Black women mathematicians in the back room performing critical calculations in the age before computers. Their mad math skills influenced every major space program from Mercury through the Shuttle.
The women were Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson and now we get a movie about them. based on the book Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly. The movie, titled Hidden Figures, will star none other than Taraji P Henson as Katherine Johnson.
You can read more about Katerine Johnson on the NASA site. I did want to share this little tidbit though:
John Glenn requested that she personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight aboard Friendship 7 – the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Isn’t that the coolest thing?
Hidden Figures is stated for release Jan. 13, 2017 to coincide with Dr. Martin Luther King day.