The United States Congress has named four women who are called “hidden.” numbers” of the space race with its highest civilian award.
The Congressional Gold Medal was presented Wednesday to the families of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine Darden at the US Capitol. Only Darden is still alive. The 82-year-old watched the ceremony from his home in Connecticut.
Lawmakers recognized four Black mathematicians for their significant work at the beginning of the space program.
They also give an award to all the women who worked as mathematicians, engineers and “human computers” in the American space program from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Margot Lee Shetterly wrote the book in 2016 Hidden Figures about the Black Women mathematicians who supported the space program in the 1960s. It was made into a movie of the same name in 2017.
“By honoring them, we honor the best spirit of our country,” Shetterly said at the ceremony.
The first space program employed hundreds of women to work as mathematicians at what is now NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. But, Black mathematicians were not allowed to work with white mathematicians due to racial segregation policies at the time. The work of Black’s researchers continued unrecognized for years.
The team used pencils, slide rulers and mechanical calculators to calculate the paths of rockets and orbiters in space and in space. A path is called a trajectory.
“Our office combined all the methods,” said Katherine Johnson The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012. “Tell me when and where you want it to go down, and I’ll tell you where, when and how to start it,” he explained.
In 1961, Johnson conducted the latest research for the Freedom 7 Mission, the first to send an American into space. The next year, he checked numbers created by NASA’s new computer for astronaut John Glenn’s orbits around the planet.
John Glenn did not trust the new computer. Days before the announcement, he told NASA, “Get a girl to crunch the numbers.” John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.
Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 – the nation’s highest honor. Her work at NASA helped open the door for many other women to participate in the space program.
Dorothy Vaughan became the first Black female director of NASA. Mary Jackson was NASA’s first black female engineer. And Christine Darden is well known for it sonic boom research.
I’m Jill Robbins.
Adithi Ramakrishnan reported this story for the Associated Press. Jill Robbins translated it for Learning English.
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Words in this Story
picture – n. a a number that represents a number (as an amount earned or points earned) and, a physical form or very human form
read – v. to find (a number, answer, or the like) by using mathematical methods
sonic boom – n. a loud explosive noise caused by the shock wave of a supersonic aircraft.
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