The woman who inspired me most outside of my family has to be my primary school teacher. Through her, I learned to love history and poetry and went on to discover more phenomenal women such as Josephine Baker, Ida B Wells, Rosa Parks and, of course, Maya Angelou and many more.
But I’m not going to talk about any of those ladies today because, having recently watched Hidden Figures, I’ve discovered three more women that deserve to be honoured right now.
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (born August 26, 1918) is an African-American physicist and mathematician who made contributions to the United States aeronautics and space programs with the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA.
Known for accuracy in computerised celestial navigation, she conducted technical work at NASA that spanned decades. During this time, she calculated the trajectories, launch windows, and emergency backup return paths for many flights from Project Mercury, including the early NASA missions of John Glenn and Alan Shepard and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon, through the Space Shuttle program. Her calculations were critical to the success of these missions. Johnson also did calculations for plans for a mission to Mars.
In 2015, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was included in the BBC series 100 Women the next year.
Dorothy Vaughan
Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (September 20, 1910 – November 10, 2008) was an African American mathematician and human computer who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and NASA at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to supervise a staff at the centre.
Dorothy was later promoted officially to this position. During her 28-year career, she prepared for the introduction of machine computers in the early 1960s by teaching herself and her staff the programming language of FORTRAN; she later headed the programming section of the Analysis and Computation Division (ACD) at Langley.
Mary Jackson
Mary Winston Jackson was an African American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Mary worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division. She took advanced engineering classes and, in 1958, became NASA’s first black female engineer.
Since the release of Hidden Figures, these ladies are hidden no more. If you haven’t seen the film and feel like a pride boost, you should go and see it. It’s uplifting to be able to say with your chest, “women did that!” and the fact that they were black at a time when segregation was still a thing is a massive achievement.
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