Saturday Short

Today's short is the trailer for Hidden Figures (Fox Movies), a film about African-American women's little-known achievements at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, during America's earliest efforts to win the space race with the former Soviet Union.

Watch the trailer.

Based on Margot Lee Shetterly's forthcoming book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and  the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (William Morrow, September 6, 2016), the film relates the previously unknown stories of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the "human computers"* who worked out the calculations necessary to launch NASA rockets and astronauts, including John Glenn, into orbit. Despite both race and gender discrimination, the women achieved outstanding successes, making possible essential scientific advances.

The film releases January 13, 2017.

Book Cover Art

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* Other women in the space program were Christine Darden, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith, and Barbara Holley.

Margot Lee Shetterly Page for Hidden Figures

Publisher Page for Shetterly's Hidden Figures

The Human Computer Project

"The Untold History of Women in Science and Technology"

NPR, "Meet the 'Rocket Girls', The Women Who Charted the Course to Space", All Things Considered, April 5, 2016 (The 'Rocket Girls" worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Their work, too, went uncredited for years.)

Women@NASA

Watch a short about Katherine Johnson at Pop Sugar.