The women who helped men reach for the stars
We have lift off! MARION MCMULLEN looks at the real-life women who reached for the stars and inspired new movie Hidden Figures
NASA astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.
His historic Friendship 7 mission was watched by millions around the world, but the unsung and unlikely heroes of the space race were a team of black women mathematicians.
They were known as “human computers” and helped John Glenn into space to reach an orbit of 17,000mph as he circled the globe three times.
The story of how Katherine G Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson achieved the extraordinary in the face of prejudice is now being told in new movie Hidden Figures.
Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of the book that led to the film, interviewed many of the women about the work during the era of segregation in America.
Margot, whose father worked at Nasa, says: “They faced the blatant, racist, legalised discrimination and segregation that we’ve all heard about.
“They had to use the ‘coloured girls’ bathroom, they had to sit at the ‘coloured’ computers table in the dining hall and, when they left Langley to go home after work, they had to go to the back of the bus.
“Every aspect of life was segregated. In many states, women weren’t even allowed to serve on juries or get credit cards in their own names.”
But she points out: “There was a shortage of male mathematicians because of the war, which drove the demand for women. And it didn’t hurt their case that the women were very good at their jobs and could be paid less than the men.”
Nasa’s chief historian Dr Bill Barry says Katherine worked on the early Mercury flights and also worked out the calculations for John Glenn’s Friendship 7 flight.
He says: “Electronic computers were being developed, but they weren’t very reliable and people didn’t trust them very well.
“Interestingly enough, when NASA was running the calculations for John Glenn’s flight, they ran them on a computer but they weren’t necessarily happy with the results.
“John Glenn said ‘Well why don’t you have the girl check the numbers?’ And by the girl, everybody knew he meant Katherine Johnson, because she was the only girl around who was good at these sorts of things!
“So John Glenn said ‘If she checks the numbers and she is OK with them, then I’m ready to fly.’
“Katherine manually calculated all the calculations, John Glenn flew his flight and all was right with the world.”
Katherine was a single mother raising three children when she was working for NASA and says: “At NASA we were all working towards the same goal, whether we knew it or not.”
Dorothy Vaughan worked as a maths teacher before joining Langley and became the head of the West Computing Group and later reinvented herself as a computer programmer. Mary Jackson rose to aerospace engineer specialising in wind tunnel experiments and aircraft data... she also used her position to help others.
Dr Barry says: “Mary was a person who was probably born to be an engineer. She had the talent and capability, but also the drive and determination.
“She became the first black woman to go into a white school in Hampton, Virginia, where the school system was segregated.
“In order to do that, she had to petition in the court to be allowed to attend the segregated white school and she actually managed to make that happen.”
Margot explains: “These women were hidden in plain sight in a way. They felt they had a chance to do jobs they loved – and they loved this challenging maths – so they didn’t draw attention to themselves.”
She points out: “The year that Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 statistically there was just a two per cent chance that she would even finish high school.
“Statistically at birth she was not expected to live to see her 35th birthday. And look at what she was able to do.”
Katherine was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2015 and last year the Katherine G Johnson Computational Research Facility was dedicated at Langley Research Centre on the 55th anniversary of astronaut Alan Shepard’s historic rocket launch and splash down, which Katherine also helped make possible.
Touchingly, Katherine, who is now 98, finds the growing fascination with her life’s work and that of her fellow female co-workers surprising and says modestly: “I was just solving problems that needed to be solved.”
As for what she advises women facing challenges today, she says: “Stick with it. No matter the problem, it can be solved. A woman can solve