This story could have easily focused solely on Katherine Johnson-the genius who, since girlhood, demonstrated her gift for numbers and complicated mathematical equations. This is quite the contrast to most Hollywood movies that focus on “white male genius”-think The Imitation Game or A Beautiful Mind-in which such intellect develops in social isolation and stands apart from a community of sustenance (unless he is supported by a woman, usually a wife). The film effortlessly weaves these three women’s stories into a singular story line of genius, solidarity and sisterhood. The film narrows the scope of the story by focusing on Katherine Johnson Dorothy Vaughan, who will become the first African American supervisor at NASA and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), who will become the first American American female engineer. ![]() Hidden Figures, which could easily be called “hidden labor,” is based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly. In a climactic scene before his impending launch, American astronaut and hero John Glenn (Glen Powers) famously requests the “smart girl”–Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji Henson), who was 44 years old at the time-when he doubts the IBM’s calculations and needs a human to reassure him of the coordinates that will launch him into space as well as into history and return him back safely.įew of us remember that computers used to be women mathematicians before machines replaced them. ![]() This deliberate gendering of the computer as girl mirrors the ways that the women employed by NASA are often referred to as girls-regardless of their race, marital status or age. ![]() Dorothy becomes the first at her job to successfully program the IBM machine, after which she speaks to the object: “Attagirl!” This “theft”-resulting from arcane Jim Crow laws in the early sixties when the story is set-proves worthwhile. Having already suffered the humiliation of being ejected from the “white” section of her local library in Virginia-and displaying eloquent rage when she warns the police officer throwing her out to not touch her sons while catching herself suddenly as she code-switches to polite dialogue lest she be manhandled and arrested-Dorothy puts to the test her newfound knowledge of Fortran, the early computer-programming language she must master and which she learned from the book she smuggled out of the library. With keen insight as one of the human “computers” at NASA, she understands how quickly her role-and that of her team of black women computers-will be replaced by this daunting object. In a pivotal scene of Hidden Figures, Dorothy Vaughan (brilliantly portrayed by Octavia Spencer) sneaks into the office space where the new IBM has been installed. “She was an American hero and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten.”īelow is a review of the movie Hidden Figures, based on a nonfiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which celebrated the careers of black female mathematicians in NASA during the Space Race. “Our NASA family is sad to learn the news that Katherine Johnson passed away this morning at 101 years old,” Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s Administrator said on Monday. Katherine Johnson, a pioneering black mathematician whose calculations ensured NASA’s astronauts safely set foot on the moon in 1969, died Monday at the age of 101.
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