Margot Lee Shetterly: Hidden figures (2018)
English language
Published Oct. 10, 2018
Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them despite their groundbreaking successes. Includes biographies on Dorothy Jackson Vaughan (1910-2008), Mary Winston Jackson (1921-2005), Katherine Colman Goble Johnson (1918- ), Dr. Christine Mann Darden (1942- ).
The topic is inspiring, and the writing is a bit dry and a lot straightforward. People like the NACA nuts would love it!
Good history of the role that women of color played in engineering, leading up to the well-known lunch counter sit-ins and US civil rights movement.
Very insightful analogy about racial segregation, comparing it to an electric fence -- even when the power is turned off, people are hesitant to climb over it. The self-selection of taking yourself out of a race before it's even begun, because of the belief that you can't win or the odds are stacked against you is powerful and real.
