In the 1950s, the US government was continuing to develop its flight capabilities, for which it required computers. Katherine became a wife, a mother and a teacher, and her story might have ended there, if it hadn’t been for her drive to continue with her mathematics. Her ability in mathematics was such that she continued her schooling beyond high school (very unusual for African-American children at that time) and had graduated from college by the time she was 18. Katherine Coleman was born in 1918 in West Virginia and showed very early on that she was no ordinary child. In telling Johnson and her colleagues’ stories, the film shed light not only on advances in technology but also the status of black people in society and the role of women in the workplace and in science. And I have seen it at least twice since when I have led discussions about the significance of the film, drawing on my own experience of working in the space industry. I have rarely watched a film that has moved me as much as Hidden Figures did when I first saw it.

The film shed slight on the status of black people in society and the role of women in the workplace.Johnson’s story and significant contributions to the US space programme, along with those of Dorothy Vaughan (a computer scientist) and Mary Jackson (an engineer), were brought to widespread public attention by the 2016 book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly and film of the same name. Add a few more facts – she was a woman, she was black and working in the US in the 1950s to early 1960s – and the scale of her success becomes more apparent. But on paper neither of those facts would make her stand out from the crowd. Katherine Johnson was a mathematician and she worked for NASA.

Katherine johnson nasa mathemation