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I highly recommend watching Hidden Figures (2017) which tells an amazing story about how the human computers of the 60's emerged from obscurity and ultimately introduced NASA to software development. Katherine is at the center of the story, the rest is history.

I just saw the movie Hidden Figures which is based on the incredible achievements of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. I was happily surprised to see this on HN. If you haven’t seen it, please do.

It was an eye opener for me as an non-American to see how normalized racism was in the 1960’s even at places like NASA where one might assume science trumps ignorance.

It is perfectly acceptable and proper to congratulate a minority group who is not only advancing the art, but doing so with the additional hardship of being a minority. Not only are they advancing the art, same as many others, but they are in a way, being a pioneer and setting an example that will undoubtedly encourage many more people like themselves to join in and contribute.

To respond with "congratulations to everyone" is like responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter". Which either intentionally or not, diminishes the point trying to be made.

If you watched Hidden Figures or read the book, I think you would understand why they deserve a little bit of extra congratulations.

I liked The Lady Astronaut OK, but it took a long while to get going. It starts with some very big events that feel like they're being skipped over to get to the real story. She's trying to cover a lot of history in a short space, which gives it a perfunctory feel.

She's not an expert in a lot of things she writes about, and so the dialogue reads awkwardly. The dialogue about the details of small aircraft read much better. I'm not a pilot myself, so maybe it's simply that I don't know it any better, but it felt more authentic -- either she is a pilot herself, or the person who helped her write that dialogue was more closely involved than the ones who helped her write math and physics.

Getting all of that criticism out of the way up front, the best parts are the history that really deserves to be known better. She started writing before Hidden Figures came out, but it's worth telling that story several times. Women served as pilots and astronauts, and we should remember both what they did and how they were marginalized by deliberate sexism and racism.

The book got better as it went on, I felt, and even having reached the end I'm not motivated to read the sequels. Still, the history her book is based on is so important that I'd encourage people to read this one.

For folks who appreciated either reading or viewing Hidden Figures and are interested in women in science history, you should keep an eye open for the play: The Women who Mapped the Stars. It's about the investigation of the cepheid variables which basically led to creating a yardstick for stellar distances.

(There's also a couple plays about one of the women in particular, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, although those are probably harder to come by.)

Added: Another very good play in this vein is Photograph 51 (centered on Rosalind Franklin).

As core rope was manufactured by (black and white) women:
Regarding how NACA/NASA gave work to black women in times from world war ii until the moon landing, "Hidden Figures" (the book) teached me more about american history of that time than my whole school career.
Technology always also influences humans, forms society.