Page 106 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

People & Personalities / Hidden Figures

The trajectory of the first American
in space in 1961 (above), was
calculated by Katherine Johnson.
Alan Shepard (right) was the man
on that historic flight, part of Nasa’s
Mercury project to put a man
into orbit around the Earth

The brilliant mathematician
Katherine Johnson, shown
here at work at Nasa in 1966

How did you first come across this “These women were It’s amazing what these women were able to
remarkable true story? do with just data sheets. There’s more
My dad worked at Nasa as an atmospheric unseen. They were in computing power in a toaster than what they
scientist. So I spent my whole childhood had to send people into space.
going over to Nasa; Christmas parties with a segregated office While these were exceptional women – I
Nasa-themed Santas just seemed normal to want to make that clear – they weren’t the
me. The wonderful thing was that the very and their work was exception. The thing that was thrilling to me
first scientist I knew, my dad, was black. For was that this wasn’t the story of a first, or an
me, that’s what science was. Many of the considered ‘women’s only, or even just a few. At this time, women
other scientists around me were also black, mathematicians were the rule, not the
work’, meaning it was
or women, or both. So I had a truly privi- exception. From 1935 to 1980, counting
leged position which normalised what women of all backgrounds and races, there
women and African-Americans could do. valued less” were more than 1,000 women doing this
A few years ago my husband and I visited work for Nasa. That’s a huge amount. We
my parents, who were talking about some of have this idea that women aren’t good at
the African-American women who worked maths and don’t exist in these fields, but that
at Nasa during the early years of the space corner. But I think the bigger reason is that simply isn’t the case – Hidden Figures is
race. I knew these women from the local these women were unseen. They were in a correcting that misconception.
community – they were my parents’ friends. segregated office and their work was
But my husband was so surprised; he considered ‘women’s work’, meaning it was What was it like to be an African-
couldn’t believe he’d never heard this story. valued less. At this time, even if a woman American woman during the 1960s?
While I knew these women, I didn’t really was doing exactly the same thing as the What kind of obstacles did these
know their stories – why they were at Nasa, engineers, who were predominantly men, women face in everyday life?
what they were doing and why there were so she could be paid less and be given a lower Segregation was still in place, and it was very
many women who worked there. job title. Now, with the distance of many important for me in the book to show the
Investigating these stories set off a whole decades and a different awareness, we are real banality of that, the daily humiliations
chain of dominoes, which eventually re-evaluating these women and their work. and slights. These women were creating
became Hidden Figures. Our eyes are now sharp enough to see them calculations to make something happen that
the way they need to be seen. had never happened in the history of
Why haven’t we heard this These women weren’t just doing some- humanity, and yet they still had to go to the
remarkable story before? thing that no African-American women had ‘colored bathroom’. That is how these
There are a lot of reasons. One is that very done before, but something that no-one of women experienced segregation in their
much like the British ladies at Bletchley Park any race or gender had done before. They everyday lives – they may not have been
(the central site for British codebreakers were on the pioneering edge of science and barked down by dogs in the street, but they
during the Second World War), the work technology, which was thrilling for them. faced humiliation at every turn.
these women were doing was classified. And they were doing all of this without Most black women at the time were
During the space race and the Cold War calculators. They were called ‘computers’ working as domestic servants, or in factories,
there was a very real fear of espionage; – this was a time when a ‘computer’ was a really scraping just to get onto the first rung GETTY
people were looking for Soviets round every job title rather than an object on your desk. of the social ladder. The African-American

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