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Author Topic:   Hidden Figures (Margot Lee Shetterly)
Robert Pearlman
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Posts: 51025
From: Houston, TX
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posted 07-11-2015 09:24 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Margot Lee Shetterly, writer, reseearcher and founder of The Human Computer Project, a digital platform devoted to telling the stories of the female mathematicians, black and white, whose hard work and smarts tipped the balance in favor of the United States in World War II, the Cold War and the Space Race, has authored "Hidden Figures: The African American Women Mathematicians Who Helped NASA and the United States Win the Space Race: An Untold Story" to be published in 2016 by Harper Collins.
You've heard the names John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong. 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. My current work in progress, a narrative non-fiction book entitled "Hidden Figures" 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.

For discussion of the movie, see Hidden Figures (2017 20th Century Fox film).

cspg
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posted 02-12-2016 09:17 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race
by Margot Lee Shetterly
Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA's African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America's space program — and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now.

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these "colored computers," as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America's fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Drawing on the oral histories of scores of these "computers," personal recollections, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, archival documents, correspondence, and reporting from the era, Hidden Figures recalls America's greatest adventure and NASA's groundbreaking successes through the experiences of five spunky, courageous, intelligent, determined, and patriotic women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and Gloria Champine.

Moving from World War II through NASA's golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women's rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a rich history of scientific achievement and technological innovation with the intimate stories of five women whose work forever changed the world—and whose lives show how out of one of America's most painful histories came one of its proudest moments.

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • William Morrow (September 6, 2016)
  • ISBN-10: 006236359X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0062363596
And the paperback edition is due December 6, 2016.

Robert Pearlman
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From: Houston, TX
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posted 09-11-2016 12:05 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
collectSPACE
Author Q&A: Margot Lee Shetterly reveals NASA's 'Hidden Figures'

More than a half century after the first NASA astronauts launched into space, one might think that there are no sweeping narratives left untold about the early years of the U.S. space program.

But there was at least one history remaining to be written: that of the women, and in particular the African-American women, who worked as the "human computers" at NASA's original research laboratory, who provided the calculations necessary for sending American spacecraft and astronauts into space and to the moon.

Robert Pearlman
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From: Houston, TX
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posted 09-15-2016 05:41 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
From Pharrell Williams on Facebook:
Congratulations to Margot Lee Shetterly, her book Hidden Figures debuted at number 7 on the The New York Times bestsellers' list.

Robert Pearlman
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Posts: 51025
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 09-16-2016 02:33 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
A young reader's edition (ages 8-12; grades 3-7) of "Hidden Figures" will be released on Nov. 29.
Now in a special new edition perfect for young readers, this is the amazing true story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program.

Robert Pearlman
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From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 11-15-2016 11:47 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"Hidden Figures" is a finalist in Goodreads Choice Awards for "Best History & Biography." Voting is open through Nov. 27.

Robert Pearlman
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From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 01-16-2018 11:37 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"Hidden Figures" has now been adapted as a picture book for young children by Margot Lee Shetterly with illustrations by Laura Freeman. From Shetterly on Twitter:
So excited that beginning today, the youngest readers can now be inspired by the women of Hidden Figures!
  • Age Range: 4-8 years
  • Hardcover: 40 pages
  • HarperCollins (January 16, 2018)
  • ISBN-10: 0062742469
  • ISBN-13: 978-0062742469

minipci
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posted 09-06-2023 09:03 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for minipci     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Quite a lengthy document by Harold Beck, Kenneth Young and Charles Murray on "Hidden Figures", can be downloaded at this site:
To my knowledge, the document posted here is the only attempt by experienced aerospace engineers to unravel fact from fiction in "Hidden Figures." The heart of the document consists of commentaries written by Harold (Hal) Beck and Kenneth Young, members of the Mission Planning and Analysis Division of the Manned Spacecraft Center from Mercury through Apollo (and beyond). Their expertise specifically involves spacecraft trajectories and rendezvous, issues that are central to the claims made in "Hidden Figures." Also, before joining the manned spaceflight program, Hal Beck worked at a desk next to Katherine Johnson's for nearly two years.

"The Portrayal of Early Manned Spaceflight in Hidden Figures: A Critique" consists of seventy-one pages of mostly arcane material. It is not an easy read. Our purpose in disseminating it is to make evidence available to future historians and journalists who will need to decide what to make of the story told in "Hidden Figures." We cannot count on that happening unless the document is so widely available that future writers cannot help running across it during their research. We encourage everyone with a special interest in manned spaceflight to download it. The document is not copyrighted. You are welcome to distribute it and quote it at whatever length you wish as long as the quotations are accurate and in context.

We have invited Margot Shetterly, the author of "Hidden Figures," to respond and will post verbatim anything she writes on this website. If others have relevant empirical material in the form of either personal experience or documentation, we will post that as well.

NukeGuy
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From: Irvine, CA USA
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posted 09-08-2023 08:21 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for NukeGuy     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Thanks!

I bought the book "Hidden Figures" and had some questions. I have not watched the film but some of the trailers I've seen showed the typical Hollywood "embellishment" of history such as the protagonist telling a supervisor that the Redstone could never put a Mercury capsule in orbit.

Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 51025
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 09-08-2023 09:19 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The book and movie are two separate, very different entities, The latter is loosely based on just one chapter of the earlier, which is why we have a separate topic for the movie.

As for Beck's, Young's and Murray's position, I think it is largely agreed among the history community that Katherine Johnson's role was inflated eevn before Shetterly wrote her book. That said, I think some of the inflation served some good by engaging the public to think about where the minorities and women were during the early years of the U.S. space program.

Prior to "Hidden Figures," the contributions of "human computers," let alone the few Black engineers at Langley, were largely overlooked, if not outright ignored, by the general populace. If the book (and to a much lesser extent, the movie) had one lasting effect, it was to ensure a more inclusive perspective was part of the media projects that followed.

Sadly, before Shetterly set about to write her book, the bulk of Katherine Johnson's personal archives — her original work notebooks and papers saved from her years with the Space Task Group and NASA — went missing after another researcher borrowed them. As such, Shetterly had to largely rely on Johnson's recollections.

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