Hidden Figures

Until recently, most Americans didn’t know that women were pivotal to the NASA space program as far back as the 1950s. Their names and accomplishments were lost to the common history we grew up studying. Aerospace exploits seemed the exclusive territory of men—the scientists, engineers, and astronauts. But the movie Hidden Figures brought these women’s names front and center.

We learned that Katherine Johnson made the critical calculations necessary for John Glenn to successfully land in Project Mercury. Her work as a mathematician would contribute to many more missions, including Apollo 11 and the space shuttle program. Dorothy Vaughan was also a mathematician, as well as the first black supervisor at NASA—one of the few women in that role.

She taught herself FORTRAN, a computing language, before she went on to teach her entire team how to program and was installed as the head of the programming division at NASA. Mary Jackson was a mathematician and an aerospace engineer with a long career at NASA. In addition to her computing skills, she served as the manager of both the Federal Women’s Program and the Affirmative Action Program at NASA to advocate for women in hiring and advancement within the organization.

She didn’t just make her own way in a man’s world; she made a way for other women to join her. These three brilliant African American women helped shape America’s aerospace program, yet we almost missed them in the landscape of male names. They weren’t invisible to their coworkers or their families.

Colleagues knew they were doing nearly impossible calculations, saving the day on more than one grand occasion, all the while advancing aerospace with their human computing skills. Someone at home knew they worked through lunch and late into the night. People knew they were making the crooked roads a little straighter for other women.

However, their stories weren’t told in the official annals of the Space Race. We didn’t see their faces in the sepia highlight reels of all those amazing launches and landings. This is how patriarchy works: a fixed focus on the accomplishments of men and the minimization or erasure of women’s contributions.

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