Virginia tucker hidden figures book professional#

Shetterly traces the fortunes of the women of West Computing. Langley, unwilling to fight the Axis and Jim Crow (segregation laws) simultaneously, placed all the black mathematicians in West Computing, a segregated work group. Thus many black women willingly signed on for NACA work at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. For example, in Virginia, with its strict racial segregation laws, black schoolteachers received half the pay of white teachers.

Virginia tucker hidden figures book professional#

The few professional jobs available to black women paid poorly. Many could only find work as maids or housecleaners. College-educated black women had few opportunities for skilled jobs. Running out of candidates, NACA recruited colored (as they were then called) women.įor a black woman in the 1940s the pay was excellent, even if college-educated whites could find better-paying jobs. Airfoil and cowling optimization research was number-intensive. When World War II started, NACA’s need for calculators exploded. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) employed still more, even before the war. Wartime code-breaking required many computers. The book was made into a major motion picture, Hidden Figures, in 2016.īefore and during World War II, the Federal Government was the biggest employers of mathematicians. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly, explores the achievements of one group of computers. The work was unglamorous, exacting, unexciting and relatively poorly paid.

Before the digital age started, complex calculations were done by hand. In the first half of the twentieth century, calculator and computer were job descriptions, not pieces of equipment. Title: Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space RaceĪuthor: Margot Lee Shetterly NSS Amazon link for this bookįormat: Hardcover/Paperback/Kindle/Audible