Hidden Figures
James I. Deutsch · Journal of American History · 2018
Hidden Figures is a clever title. It suggests how the film's protagonists—known as computers, due to their mathematical abilities to calculate numbers accurately and rapidly by hand, in support of the U.S. aeronautics and space program—have been largely hidden from history. It also suggests how the solutions to certain mathematical problems are hidden until cracked by someone with the right stuff. Credit for the title goes to Margot Lee Shetterly, whose compelling book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016) inspired the film. Many historians may wish that the film had followed the book more closely, particularly in its chronology of the events portrayed. The film version is certainly inspiring. It focuses on three African American women who worked as human computers at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia. The facility changed its name to the Langley Research Center on October 1, 1958, when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Mary Winston Jackson (1921–2005), Katherine Goble Johnson (b. 1918), and Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (1910–2008) were three extraordinary mathematicians who courageously overcame tremendous racial and gender barriers to achieve proper recognition for their talents.