Space race

Black female mathematicians key to NASA's early successes

Reviewed by Sheilla Jones

Winnipeg Free Press, Books, D19,September 24, 2016

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

By Margot Lee Shetterly

William Morrow/HarperCollins, 368 pages, $35

The launch of the first American manned spacecraft into orbit around the Earth on Feb. 20, 1962, was a bold effort, backed by a large team of scientists and mathematicians who calculated, re-calculated — and re-calculated again — the trajectory of the flight.

Astronaut John Glenn would be in the world’s most sophisticated tin can, and he knew his life depended on those calculations being right. If he survived the blast into space and the planned three orbits around the Earth, he would then have to survive the descent and splash-down in the Atlantic — with little more than a 20-minute window for rescue by the navy.

Shortly before the launch at Cape Canaveral, Glenn wanted the calculations checked one more time.

"Get the girl to check the numbers," said the astronaut. And, writes author Margot Lee Shetterly in Hidden Figures, he told them, "If she says the numbers are good, I’m ready to go."

That "girl" was 43-year-old Katherine Johnson, one of the human computers from the all-black West Computing Unit at NASA’s Langley Lab in Virginia.

The aeronautics industry in the U.S. grew from the country’s 43rd largest industry in 1938 to the largest in the world by 1943. During the Second World War, there was a desperate need for people with a talent for mathematics to fill the jobs calculating trajectories and all the other information needed by engineers and designers to build planes. In 1941, U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt signed an order de-segregating the defence industry, and it opened the door to job opportunities rarely available to black women. Or black men, for that matter.

In Hidden Figures, Shetterly follows the lives of four black women who joined Langley at a time when computing using slide rules and adding machines was women’s work. When engineers and scientists at the labs referred to computers, they were talking about the women.

The "coloured computers" were somewhat insulated from the racial tension and violence of the 1960s, in part because the scientists and engineers considered their mathematical skills more important than the colour of their skin. Nonetheless, the stories of Johnson and her colleagues were shaped by the war effort and by the civil rights movement.

Shetterly notes Johnson and the other black mathematicians were the only "coloureds" allowed to eat in the cafeteria with the other professionals. They were also the only group with assigned seating — at a back table with a sign reading "Colored Computers." In a small act of defiance at a time when black people were being arrested and fired from their jobs for challenging Whites Only signage, one of the women would surreptitiously shove the sign into her purse and leave with it. A week or two later, another sign would appear, only to disappear into a purse. It was a ritual played out with absurd regularity, notes Shetterly.

As the launch date for John Glenn’s orbital flight approached, Johnson pored over the details of every minute of the mission. When she delivered her calculations to the Project Mercury engineers, she was sure her numbers were right.

Johnson didn’t go to Cape Canaveral to witness the launch. Instead, she watched on television, as did millions of other Americans, as Glenn completed the three orbits and splashed down in the ocean, about 1,300 kilometres from Bermuda. He was picked up by a naval vessel 21 minutes later. Johnson’s calculations were nearly perfect; the splash-down had been off by 65 kilometres.

Shetterly’s father was an engineer at Langley, so she has a particular insight into what happened there. This is her first book, and it shows. The heretofore untold story of the hidden calculators — black women in the West Computing Unit who played a key role in the American space program — ought to be a compelling read. There is a great deal of detail in Hidden Figures, and the weight of it all seems at times to suffocate the very real drama of the women’s lives.

Still, Katherine Johnson will soon get her dramatic moment in the sun. Hidden Figures is to be released as a movie in January 2017, starring Taraji P. Henson as Johnson, and featuring Hollywood notables such as Kirsten Dunst and Kevin Costner. It might just be worth waiting for the movie to come out.

Sheilla Jones is a Winnipeg author with an advanced degree in theoretical physics and an appreciation for those who can wield numbers with beauty and precision.