Maryam's Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani by Megan Reid

This colourful picture book tells the story of an extraordinary woman mathematician, Maryam Mirzakhani. 

Maryam loved to tell stories to her younger sister every night. Maryam and her friend Roya loved to roam through a favourite part of their city and imagine themselves in their stories. At home Maryam loved to draw and write the stories she created in her mind. Reading and art were her favourite subjects and she hoped to be a famous writer some day. Maryam was fortunate to be able to attend school, now that her country of Iran was at peace.

One subject Maryam disliked was math. She did not like numbers. But when Maryam was twelve-years-old, she began studying geometry in math. Suddenly Maryam found herself liking math because "Every number held a story. It made those numbers into shapes -- and those shapes into pictures."

Maryam and Roya entered a competition for young mathematicians called the International Mathematical Olympiad. This was the first time girls had made the Iranian team and they did not disappoint. They both won medals. The two friends continued to practice for the competition the following year which was held in Toronto, Canada. At that competition, Maryam won the grand prize with a perfect score. After college, Maryam attended graduate school at Harvard where she spent time with her professors discussing mathematical formulas and theories. As she did when she was younger, Maryam would spread sheets of paper on the floor of  her home to work on mathematical problems. Her daughter, Anahita would tell friends that her mother was a painter! Maryam continued to work on problems that dealt with infinity and she also wrote papers and presented her new ideas.

One of those new ideas was called " 'the magic wand theorem' because it worked like magic to solve many problems that scientists had been puzzling over for more than a hundred years." In 2014, Maryam won the Fields Medal for this theorem, marking her as the first woman and first Iranian to win the coveted prize. Sadly, at this time Maryam was also diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. She died in 2017. Her lifelong friend, Professor Roya Beheshti, herself a mathematician, spoke about how Maryam was a girl eager to learn, with a kind heart. She was both a mathematician and a storyteller.

Discussion

In the picture book, Maryam's Magic young readers are introduced to a woman mathematician who  made significant contributions in the field of mathematics and who is virtually unknown outside that specialty. Few young girls are drawn to the discipline of mathematics, often developing a strong dislike for it, early on. This was the case with Maryam.

Maryam was born in Tehran, Iran in 1977. Maryam loved to read and wasn't initially attracted to mathematics. In fact, she wanted to become a writer. Maryam was inspired by the many biographies she watched on television of famous women. The Iran-Iraq War was ending as Maryam completed elementary school. She was able to secure a place at the Tehran Farzanegan School which was run by the National Organization for the Development of Exceptional Talent. There she made a friend in Roya Behesti and the two girls scoured bookstores, buying the cheap books to take home and read. 

Initially Maryam did poorly in mathematics but in her second year at the school she had a different teacher who encouraged her. When she and Roya began attending the high school, they were able to solve some of the questions from that year's national mathematics competition. The two girls went to their school principal and asked for classes in solving math problems like those offered at the boys school. Even though Iran's National Mathematics Olympiad had never had female entrants, their principal was undeterred. 

Maryam entered that Olympiad and she won the gold medal for mathematics at the Iranian National Olympiad in 1994. Maryam went on to win gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong in 1994 and again at the International Mathematical Olympiad held the following year in Toronto. 

Maryam completed her B.Sc. in Mathematics from Sharif University of Technology in 1999. She then moved to the United States where she earned her Ph.D at Harvard, under the tutelage of Chris McMullen who had also won a Fields Medal. As she attended McMullen's classes, she asked many questions in English, she took her notes in Farsi. Her 2004 dissertation has been described as a masterpiece and "truly spectacular" and parts were published as separate papers in the top three mathematical journals.

She became an assistant professor at Princeton and a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute. Maryam then joined the faculty at Stanford. It was Maryam's intellectual curiosity and her determination to consider problems that couldn't be solved that set her apart. Maryam married Jan Vondrak, a Czech applied mathematician and they had a daughter named Anahita.

Maryam's Magic captures the enthusiasm Maryam Mirzakhani had for mathematics, and especially for tackling difficult problems. While the text provides all the necessary details of Maryam's life and even explains in a very simple way some of her work, it is the illustrations by artist, Aaliya Jaleel that capture her joy at doing math and her unique method of working on problems. Maryam's imagination which she developed at a young age from her reading, was put to good use as a mathematician studying abstract surfaces. This too is captured in Jaleel's exquisite artwork.

Maryam initially didn't like math, but with an encouraging teacher, her attitude changed. With support, she grew more confident and did not feel intimidated by mathematics. Perhaps this is the key to success in math for girls. It also helped that Maryam had another friend who shared her interest. Maryam's fearless approach to mathematics, her courage to lead the way  and her humility in the face of her outstanding accomplishments are important lessons for girls everywhere. 

Reid's presentation of Maryam Mirzakhani's life and accomplishments offers encouragement for those girls interested in science and mathematics to persist and to be courageous. There is a place for them in the STEM world and they have much to offer! In addition to the Author's Note, Reid has included an Important Dates section and a few suggestions for readers to learn more about Maryam Mirzakhani.

Book Details:

Maryam's Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani by Megan Reid
New York: Balzer & Bray       2021

One Step Further by Katherine Johnson

In One Step Further: My Story of Math, the Moon, and a Lifelong Mission, Katherine Johnson, famed human computer who helped with the space race, and her daughters tell their story and how her life influenced them.

Katherine Johnson loved numbers as a child. This love she passed on to her daughters, Joylette, Connie and Kathy. At this time she was married to Jimmie Coleman. In her own home, math and music were prominent. They went to Sunday school and regular school.

During the time that Katherine's children attended school, Jim Crow laws were in effect. This meant that black people had to be kept separate from white people. Often the segregated facilities were not as nice as those for white people. Although life was hard, the three sisters were protected by the community they lived in.

Katherine had graduated summa cum from West Virginia State college, earning here degree in math. She found work as a teacher but it was considered a dangerous job for a black woman due to discrimination. Many did not want Black children to be educated. So Katherine and Jimmie moved their family to a new place. But even in their new home, Katherine's daughters still experienced segregation. 

Then Katherine got a new job at the National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics as a human computer. Instead of computers, humans would make the calculations that engineers relied on to help planes fly farther and faster. So every morning, Katherine dressed in her pearls and a good skirt and jacket, went to work with many other college-educated African-American women who worked as mathematicians. Katherine's daughters found role models in these women.

Because white people felt that African Americans were not as smart, Katherine felt that they had to look and be perfect. Like the society they lived in, her workplace was also segregated.

Unlike most of the other computers, Katherine wanted to know the why of the math and how it was being used. After pressuring to attend meetings, Katherine was allowed to go. At this time NACA was renamed NASA and it's mission was to send humans into space. This work was top secret so she couldn't talk about it at home either. At night Katherine would talk to her daughters about the stars, pointing out the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt.

As her children grew up they became involved in the fight for equality. Her daughter Kathy attending college peacefully protested to end racial segregation. 

John Glenn Jr. was chosen to be the first American to fly into space. To help with the space race, NASA began to use machine computers. While these machines were faster than the human computers, were they just as accurate. John Glenn wasn't so sure and he would not fly until the machine calculations were checked by Katherine! She also helped with the calculations that were needed to send man to the moon. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins blasted into space on their way to the moon.

Katherine's daughters did go one step further inspired by their mathematician mother: Joylette worked at NASA, while both Kathy and Connie became teachers. Katherine retired from NASA in 1986.In 2018, NASA named an entire facility after Katherine Johnson.

Discussion

This engaging picture book tells the story of Katherine Johnson, human computer and mathematician extraordinaire. One Step Further not only tells Katherine's remarkable story but focuses on how her life and accomplishments encouraged her own daughters to go "one step further". It is a story of a brilliant, determined African-American woman who overcame  several social obstacles to become a major force in the race to put a man on the moon. Despite the obvious obstacles racial segregation presented, Katherine also had to confront sexual discrimination in the workplace. One Step Further portrays Katherine as a woman who did not back down. In this way, Katherine is presented as a good role model for women and especially women of colour to confront and break down barriers.

And Katherine's daughters were able to go "one step further" due to changes brought about by the civil rights movement and their own determined efforts. Joylette Goble Hylikc received a Masters of Science in Management Information Systems and worked at NASA before working at Lockheed Martin as a senior requirements engineer. Katherine Goble Moore also received a masters from Montclair State University and worked as an educator for thirty-three years. Connie Goble Boykin Garcia passed away in 2010. She also worked as a teacher after completing a bachelor's degree from Hampton Institute/University.

Accompanying the text, are many interesting photographs of Katherine and her children, as well as historic photos of racial segregation, protests against segregation  Katherine working at NASA, John Glenn Jr. and Buzz Aldrin. The photographs of racial segregation are important as they show younger readers what living under Jim Crow laws was like for Katherine and her family and other African-Americans.

Illustrator Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, granddaughter of Caldecott-winning illustrator Jerry Pinkney, wanted to portray both Katherine, John Glenn Jr. and Buzz Aldrin in a way that fit with the photographs included, adding a layer of context to the story.

The back matter includes detailed Historical Notes & Context: Racial Segregation in the United States and About Katherine Johnson, as well as a Timeline and a Glossary. 

A very well-done children's biography about an amazing woman, whose contributions to space science were considerable and long overdue in being recognized.

Book Details:

One Step Further: My Story of Math, the Moon, and a Lifelong Mission by Katherine Johnson
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Kids    2021

Emmy Noether: The Most Important Mathematician You've Never Heard Of by Helaine Becker

Emmy Noether is a little known mathematician "who solved the mystery of why some laws of physics, such as the law of gravity, never change." 

Emmy was born in Erlangen, Germany in 1882. In the late 1800's, girls were encouraged to be quiet and demure and to prepare for marriage and having a family. However, Emmy was different; she was interested in mathematics and puzzles and excelled at both.

When she turned eighteen-years-old, Emmy's father, a university professor, arranged for her to sit on some lectures. It soon became evident that Emmy was very intelligent; she often helped students with their work.

Three years later, the university allowed women to enroll as students and Emmy earned her degree. Emmy found a way to teach at university, something women were also not allowed to do at this time. 

When Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity, he was unable to explain how calculations (used to try to prove the theory) appeared to suggest that energy was being lost in the universe. This violated the principle of the conservation of energy. In a (closed) system, the amount of energy must be conserved; it can change form and move from one spot to another. Many scientists tried unsuccessfully to solve this puzzle.

Emmy Noether was asked to consider this problem. She took a unique approach, looking for larger patterns. When Emmy looked at a larger area of space she found that energy was being conserved, proving a part of the relativity theorem no one else was able to. Emmy's contributions to physics did not end there. She also discovered that mathematical laws of symmetry and the physical laws of conservation are connected, with each symmetry law paired with a conservation law. This became known as Noether's Theorem.Emmy made many more contributions to science, all of which where recognized by scientists but never acclaimed by the scientific world dominated by men. When war came to Germany in the 1930's, Emmy who was Jewish, was forced to flee to America. Sadly, became ill shortly afterwards and died. But her contributions to science continue to be used today.

Discussion

Helaine Becker has written an informative and engaging picture book on a woman scientist who made significant contributions to our understanding of the laws that govern the natural world. That scientist was mathematician Amalie Emmy Noether, born March 23, 1882 in Erlangen, Germany. Since girls were not allowed to attend college preparatory school, Emmy attended a finishing school to prepare her to teach English and French. Instead of teaching, she managed to audit classes at the University of Erlangen and in 1903 audited classes at the University of Gottingen. In 1904, the University of Erlangen began to allow women students so Emmy returned to their to study, earning her Ph.D in Mathematics in 1907. 

After working without pay at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen from 1908 to 1915, Emmy joined the Mathematical Institute in Gottingen in 1915. There she began working with fellow mathematicians, Felix Klein and David Hilbert on Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. It was during this time that Emmy made her contributions to the general relativity theory and developed her Neother's Theorem.

Because she was a woman, her contributions were largely unrecognized and it wasn't until 1922 that she began to receive a small salary and become an associate professor at Gottingen University. Her political views, and ethnicity (Emmy was Jewish) also led to discrimination.

However, Emmy's contributions were not just limited to helping prove part of Einstein's general relativity theory. Her work was ground-breaking in many areas of mathematics. It wasn't until 1932 that Emmy received recognition with the awarding of the Ackermann-Tuebner Memorial Prize in mathematics. 

The rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930's meant Emmy had to flee Germany for America. Unlike her countryman and fellow scientist, Albert Einstein who was offered a teaching job at Princeton University, Emmy was refused a position because she was a woman. Sadly Emmy died at the age of 53 from post-operative complications.

Becker offers her readers an accurate portrayal of Emmy Noether's life, highlighting Emmy's resiliency, intelligence, determination and perseverance. This book is a reminder to young girls of the obstacles women experienced in the last century simply because they were women, even when they demonstrated remarkable intelligence and ability. Emmy Noether was one of many women scientists and researchers who made substantial discoveries and contributions in many fields, only for their efforts to go unrecognized. 

Each page of Emmy Noether offers short, detailed paragraphs of text accompanied by the artwork of Canadian artist, Kari Rust. The illustrations were drawn by hand and then coloured digitally. Becker has included a very detailed biography of Emmy Noether in an Author's Note in the back matter. Also included are more book suggestions in a Further Reading section. 

To learn more about Emmy Noether, check out the Perimeter Institute's lecture

You can read more about the principle of the conservation of energy from Khan Academy.

Emmy Noether image:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/emmy-noether-should-be-your-hero-180962591/

Book Details:

Emmy Noether: The Most Important Mathematician You've Never Heard Of by Helaine Becker
Toronto: Kids Can Press     2020
40 pp.

Nothing Stopped Sophie by Cheryl Bardoe

While many young girls today struggle at mathematics, history has recorded some women who made great contributions to the discipline. One such person was Sophie Germain, a French mathematician and physicist. She was born into a wealthy family in 1776 in Rue Denis, in Paris, France, to Ambroise-Francois Germain and Marie-Madelaine Gruguelin. It is believed her father was a silk merchant. He eventually became the director of the Bank of France.

Sophie lived during a tumultuous time of revolution. She was born the year of the American Revolution and was thirteen-years-old when the French Revolution began in her own country of France. Living in such an era likely had a strong influence on her to challenge the social norms of the times.

Forced to remain at home during the early revolution, Sophie began to read from her father's extensive library. Reading L'Histoire des Mathematiques by Montucla led Sophie to read a story describing the death of Archimedes at the hands of a Roman soldier during the capture of Syracuse.  This motivated her to study mathematics and she also taught herself Latin and Greek which offered her the opportunity to study the works of mathematicians like Euler and scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton.

At this time it was not acceptable for a young girl to be interested in mathematics and her parents did everything to discourage her from continuing her studies. Sophie was kept in her room, and was denied warm clothing and firewood to keep herself warm. But Sophie persisted and her parents relented.

It was also not possible for a young woman to attend school so when the Ecole Polytechnique opened in 1794, Sophie was not able to attend lectures. She was eighteen by this time and very determined. Since notes from classes at the Ecole were made available to those who were interested, Sophie managed to obtain them. She was particularly interested in the lectures of J.L. Lagrange to whom she sent her observations about his lectures under the pseudonym of Monsieur Antoine-August LeBlanc. He in turn, was intrigued by the unknown writer's paper and managed to track down the identity to Sophie. Fortunately, Monsieur Lagrange was impressed and became Sophie's mentor.

Sophie became interested in number theory, corresponding with Adrien-Marie Legendre and later on Carl Frederich Gauss. When the latter mathematician eventually learned he had been corresponding with a young woman he remarked, "How can I describe my astonishment and admiration on seeing my esteemed correspondent M leBlanc metamorphosed into this celebrated person. . . when a woman, because of her sex, our customs and prejudices, encounters infinitely more obstacles than men in familiarising herself with [number theory's] knotty problems, yet overcomes these fetters and penetrates that which is most hidden, she doubtless has the most noble courage, extraordinary talent, and superior genius."

Sophie also became interested in elasticity and entered the Paris Academy of Science's contest to find a solution to a problem regarding Ernst Chladni's experiments with vibrating plates. Her initial entries did not win but after further work, Sophie did claim the prize, in 1815, becoming the first woman to do so. She was unable to claim her prize publicly because women were forbidden to enter the Academy of Science unless they were the wife of a member.

Sophie later on became interested in a mathematical problem called Fermat's Last Theorem. She wrote  a potential solution to the problem, which although weak did advance mathematicians towards their goal of solving this problem. Sophie died in 1831, after suffering from breast cancer. While ill she continued her work in mathematics and philosophy, a mathematician to the very end.

Discussion

The story of mathematician Sophie German is a remarkable one and well captured in Nothing Stopped Sophie by Cheryl Bardoe. She lived during a time when it was not acceptable for women to be interested in the sciences and when expectations for women were limited only to family and the home.

Bardoe captures all of the important events in Sophie Germain's life in her exquisite picture book. Her account focuses on Sophie's determination to pursue her love of mathematics despite all of the obstacles placed in front of her. She was not allowed an education in mathematics, she had few mentors and those that she often wrote to did not respond back, especially if they learned their correspondent was a young woman. Even when she was successful, that success was only grudgingly acknowledged by her peers. The lesson here for young, budding women scientists and mathematicians, is to be persistent and to find those who will support you in developing your interest. Hopefully, your parents will be more supportive than Sophie's parents were!

Nothing Stopped Sophie is illustrated by awarding -winning author and illustrator Barbara McClintock. In her note at the back McClintock reveals how she developed the illustrations for the story. McClintock used "colorful markers, gouache, and collage" to capture the story in what she describes as a nonliteral visual way. For example, McClintock illustration of Sophie receiving the academy's prize shows "Sophie's winning formula flows out of her pen around the all-male members of the academy, the top hats and coattails flying in the gale of numbers." McClintock's colourful illustrations capture Sophie's struggles but also the joy she found in mathematics.

Book Details:

Nothing Stopped Sophie: The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain by Cheryl Bardoe
New York: Little, Brown and Company      2018

Margaret and the Moon by Dean Robbins

Margaret And The Moon tells the story of Margaret Hamilton, computer scientist and the first software engineer. Margaret earned a B.A. in mathematics with a minor in philosophy from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana in 1958. During her time at Earlham she met James Cox Hamilton and they married after she received her B.A. She postponed work on a PH.D when she was offered the opportunity to work on the Apollo missions. At this time there were no such disciplines as computer science and software engineering, the latter a term Margaret coined while working on the Apollo program. She was responsible for the on board flight software for the Apollo and Skylab missions.

Before working on Apollo Margaret worked at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) developing software to aid in predicting weather and she also worked on the SAGE Project at Lincoln Lab where she first developed software for predicting weather systems and track their movements. This latter ability was refined for use in tracking hostile aircraft, as the Cold War was in progress. Margaret joined Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at MIT which was involved in the Apollo program, responsible for developing software for the Apollo command module and the lunar lander.

Margaret And The Moon tells the story of how Margaret's curiosity about the world around her and her love of math led her to her career in mathematics and ultimately into coding. And that's a good thing because unknown to those of us who were watching the first lunar landing in July of 1969, Margaret was the person who saved the mission.When astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were attempting to land the lunar module Eagle on the surface of the moon, the on board computers sent out an alarm. The alarms indicated the computers were overloaded with too many tasks and the landing would be aborted. But the code that Margaret Hamilton had written had foreseen this very thing and it ordered the computer to ignore those tasks and give priority to the lunar landing tasks.

Robbins picture book takes young readers through the story in a simply way and then at the back provides an Author's Note about Margaret Hamilton as well as a Bibliography and offers Additional Reading resources. Lucy Knisley's illustrations were done using ink and paper and coloured in Adobe Photoshop.
The wonderful photographs of Margaret throughout her life can be found
on the inside of the back cover of the book. A better option would have been to include these on the pages at the end.

For more background information on Margaret Hamilton, read Wired Magazine's great article, "Her Code Got Humans On The Moon -- And Invented Software Itself".


Book Details:

Margaret And The Moon by Dean Robbins, illustrated by Lucy Knisley
New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2017

Movie: Hidden Figures

The movie Hidden Figures tells the remarkable story of three gifted African-American women mathematicians who made significant contributions to the American space program during a time when segregation and racial discrimination against blacks and women was an ongoing problem in America.

The film opens with a brief backstory of the three women,Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae).  Katherine Johnson is the focus of the film but Vaughan and Jackson's experiences are also chronicled. Katherine is shown to be gifted in mathematics and her parents are encouraged to enroll her in a new school where her abilities are further developed. The film moves quickly to the year 1961 where the three women work at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The tone of the film is set early one when the three women are at the side of the road where Dorothy is working on getting their car running again. A state trooper pulls up, overly suspicious and demanding identification when the women insist they work for NASA. It's obvious he can't believe NASA hires blacks and much less black women. Appealing to his patriotism, the convince the trooper to give them an escort to the facility. The ensuing race to Langley is one of the film's comedic moments.

All three work in the West Area Computers which was a segregated area of Langley as "computers", a name given to those who solved complex mathematical equations before the mainframe computer was in use. Dorothy hopes to become a supervisor but she is repeatedly passed over, while Mary aspires to be an engineer, a career path not open to women and certainly not a black woman. They are all working towards putting a man in space and attempting to catch up to the Russians who have successfully launched a satellite, Sputnik. To that end, Dorothy's supervisor, Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst) visits the West Area Computers and requests Dorothy send her a computer who can do complex math quickly. Dorothy immediately suggests Katherine whom she identifies as someone who can do anything you can throw at her.

Katherine is sent to work with the Space Task Force headed up by Al Harrison (Kevin Costner). The Space Task Force is in a different building with no bathrooms for colored women. Her initial days in the Space Task Force are fraught with discrimination. She is mistaken for a cleaning lady, given calculations to check that have been severely redacted and is forced to use a separate coffee flask. As there are no colored bathrooms Katherine must leave her desk for twenty minutes to run across the center to the colored bathrooms in the west area. Her main nemesis is Paul Stafford who works to make Katherine's job as difficult as possible and refuses to allow her to sign her name to the daily reports.

Katherine's incredible mathematical genius soon becomes apparent.  Katherine's first assignment is to verify all the calculations for Alan Shepard's mission, a parabolic trajectory which will send him into suborbital flight. The Space Task Center needs to know his exact trajectory from lift-off to splash-down. Despite being given calculations with much information redacted, Katherine is able to accomplish her task. Shepard's mission is a huge success but the most daunting one was to come.

During this time, Dorothy Vaughan's attempts to get promoted to supervisor are thwarted by Vivian Mitchell. Mary Jackson is sent over to engineering where she meets aeronautical engineer Karl Zielinski who encourages her to pursue an engineering degree. However, despite having degrees in math and physical science, Mary discovers that she needs to take night courses at Hampton High School which is a segregated school.

Two 7090 IBM computers,NASA during Project Mercury 1962
Taken by Christopher C. Kraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7090#/media/File:NASAComputerRoom7090.NARA.jpg

After working on Alan Shepard's mission, Harrison's group focused on the math necessary to send astronaut John Glenn into an orbital path around the Earth and then safely returning him. This was the main goal of the Mercury project. Glenn would attain an orbital path after blasting off from earth atop a powerful rocket. In the movie there seems to be some issue as to which rocket would be used. The Redstone rockets, developed by Von Braun continue to crash. Katherine's calculations demonstrate that the rocket is too heavy and does not have the power to achieve the required trajectory required to orbit the earth. Katherine Johnson, using math convinces her coworkers that this must be atop the more powerful Atlas rocket rather than the Redstone. It is Glenn's mission that the movie focuses on.

Katherine's job is to verify all the calculations but she appears to be hindered by the racist environment at NASA that sees her taking twenty-minute bathroom breaks because she has to run across the compound to use the colored bathroom. Frustrated with this situation, Harrison confronts Katherine who explains what she is experiencing working at NASA and in an iconic scene, Harrison is seen smashing the sign for the colored bathroom. After it's announced that John Glenn (Glen Powell) will be the astronaut to fly in the first orbital mission he is taken on a tour of Langley. The black staff is separated from the white staff and the intent is that they will not meet Glenn. In Hidden Figures, Glenn is portrayed as the consummate gentleman, kind and courteous. In the movie this comes across quite clearly. He is shown as determined to meet the African-American staff when it's evident NASA brass aren't interested in him doing so.

As Katherine works on the Mercury project, the film explores the situations of Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson to a lesser extent. NASA sees the arrival of the IBM 7090 mainframe computer but the computer sits idle in a room because the technicians cannot get it working. Harrison is disgusted by this failure. Dorothy on her way back to the west computer group sees the computer room empty and decides to learn more about it and how to program it. She recognizes that her computers will no longer be needed once the mainframe is up and running, so she decides to learn programming and to teacher her computers as well. In this way they will be able to save their jobs. She is forced to steal a book on FORTRAN programming from the public library because as a black woman she is unable to sign out books. Dorothy learns FORTRAN, gets the IBM working and sets to teaching her computers the language. Mary Johnson, encouraged by mentor Karl Zielinski, applies to the court and is granted permission to attend night classes to earn the credits she needs for engineering school.

The climax of the film is Glenn's historic flight into space. His mission had been delayed several times due to various issues, but the Friendship 7 was launched into orbit on February 20,  1962. Similar to what real life, Glenn wanted Johnson to verify the trajectory computed by the new IBM computer,  "get the girl to check the numbers... If she says the numbers are good... I'm ready to go."

Besides portraying the exception mathematical abilities of Vaughan, Johnson and Jackson, Hidden Figures also shows that these women had lives outside of NASA: they were working mothers with children, wives with husbands and still had to conform to social conventions for women. Although the historical accuracy is fairly good for the different NASA missions shown the film does contain some inaccuracies. The overarching theme of the movie is that systemic racial discrimination and sexist bias was a significant factor in impeding America's progress in the space race. However, that's not exactly an accurate portrayal of the situation at NASA for this time period.  For example, in Hidden Figures Dorothy Vaughan does not become a supervisor until the end of the movie which is sometime in1962. In fact Vaughan was promoted to supervisor of the colored computers in 1949, becoming the first black manager. Katherine Johnson is shown repeatedly running across the compound to use the "colored" bathroom. However, when NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) became NASA in 1958, segregated facilities (bathrooms, dining areas and work areas) were abolished. Dorothy Vaughan was part of a racially integrated Analysis and Computation Division that included both men and women. In the film Mary Jackson also does not earn her engineering degree until later on but in fact Jackson became NASA's first black female engineer in 1958. And Katherine Johnson began working in the Space Task Group in 1958. She also had co-authored a report in 1960 on the equations for determining the orbital spaceflight of a spacecraft with a known landing.

Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson and Janelle Monae all give outstanding performances supported by a capable cast that includes Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons and Glen Powell. The film includes much historic film footage including news casts from the early 1960's. Hidden Figures not only presents side of the space race that many viewers are completely unfamiliar with, it also is an important vehicle for promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers to young girls who might see the film. This is a film not to be missed especially if you have an interest in the space race of the 1960's.

Those wanting to explore further the story of the black women mathematicians who were the hidden figures behind the NASA space program and victory in the space race are encouraged to read Margot Lee Shetterly's, Hidden Figure.

For more information on Dorothy Vaughan see her biography page at NASA's website.

For more information on Katherine Johnson see her biography page at NASA's website.

Mary Jackson's biography page can also be found on the NASA website.

For information on specific NASA missions the NASA webpage, "Humans In Space" has detailed information.

One of the trailers for Hidden Figures: