The NASA women who inspired 'Hidden Figures' will get Congressional gold medals | Hacker News Reader

The NASA women who inspired 'Hidden Figures' will get Congressional gold medals

edition.cnn.com

102 pointsga-vu22 comments

I saw the "Hidden Figures" film recently, and liked it. It seems like one of those things that are good for a lot of people to see, especially in tech.

The still image that the CNN piece picked wasn't very representative of the film, IMHO. The scene had a place in the context of the rest of the film, and perhaps conveys some of the spirit that helped them through, but picking that single still alone seemed to me (I could be mistaken) more likely a decision of an advertiser than the director.

One thing the film didn't and couldn't do, though I wish it could've: in some scenes, when one of the main characters is treated badly, I wish I could've been there in the real world analogue of it, and seen how all the others present reacted. The people who made the film convey a perspective on this, using the tools of film, and it's believable and helpful. But no one actually knows all of what everyone in the room was thinking and hinted at. What people were actually thinking, and how they acted, as wrongs were happening, also seems something important to learn from.

I thought the film was good, but it simplified the story considerably. In particular, the dramatic bits about racism were a lot more nuanced in the book.

I recommend reading the book for the more accurate and complex reality these women faced regarding race and sexism.

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).

Software Engineer Margaret Hamilton received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 2016.

Hooray for women in STEM.

She also has her own Lego figurine.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/women-of-nasa-21312

Please read the book, I found it to be a deep lesson of the history of black female scientists.

It really makes you wonder who else may be out there who deserves a medal for their work, but was never properly recognized because of gender, race, or other sociological reasons…

A common critique of Thomas Edison is that a large part of invention that gets attributed to him was the work of his employees who only got workmen's wages in return. The idea of an industrial research laboratory where employees get paid but in all other aspects get unrecognized is often attribute to have started with him.

My understanding of modern research labs is that the actual inventors put their name on the patent, but the owner of the patent may be the company.

Is that not the case? Or is the inventor usually just the project leaders?

It seems very wrong that Edison would have put himself on the patent as the inventor AND the owner of the patent.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the people named on the patent have to be the actual inventors. A lawyer explained to me that you have to be the inventor behind at least one of the claims. Of course that practice can be abused.

A way to protect your inventorship is to write down what you think you invented, and submit it in writing to your employer. I work for a F500, and we have an official process for this, with a reward. It benefits the company to get patent-able ideas documented.

Yes, you're required to accurately list all inventors or that's cause to invalidate the patent.

Check out how many patents Steve Jobs has. I suspect that he wanted to be listed as an inventor on anything that he was directly involved with, even only slightly.

Many patents are owned by the inventor(s).

Another big one in our culture is location prestige. When I was reading a lot of scientific papers I lost count of how many times top universities on the coasts got credit for things that had shown up a decade earlier in some little known paper published by someone in some smaller midwestern or southern college. I saw lots of this in theoretical biology, math, and CS.

I think it was only rarely plagiarism. Mostly it was just that stuff only gets noticed when it gets published by a prestigious university lab. They were probably honestly unaware that anyone else had ever done anything similar.

The NYT started this effort a while back:

Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. Now, we’re adding the stories of other remarkable people.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlook...

There are people that deeply resent the presence of black people in this country, aimlessly wondering about STEM and inventive contributions to American/Western society by people with African heritage and concluding there aren't any, not realizing that there was a pattern of suppressing those contributions by people just like them, amplified over the last century.

It's unfortunate because it appears that America is also losing its tolerance for speech about racial injustice, responding with fatigue and incredulity. The narrative of a racially equal country has lost its motivational energy, and meanwhile I feel that the story of black 2030 in America is looking very dim.

America needs a persuasive national story about how race is going to work from 2020 to 2030.

The reason why I get fatigued when people bring up race and try to make sweeping national changes is that I see it as counterproductive.

Until we stop dividing people into classes based on race these problems are going to persist. Efforts that set out to bring about "racial justice" actually compound the problem by reinforcing the idea that these artificial divisions have any meaning at all. The goal should not be a racially equal country, the goal should be a country where people don't think about race any more.

By all means, let's work to lift the poor out of poverty and bring justice to the prison system. But let's do it because they are poor and because it is right, not because of the color of their skin.

It's such a privileged thing to say "Let's sweep over the horrendously long history in this country of racial oppression and discrimination, such things are not relevant to today's concerns. Everybody has equality of opportunity now, so therefore racial inequities no longer exist and we should ignore race entirely. This is post-racial America."

The credibility of the speaker matters here when issuing a call to ignore race. That's because across America there is an unwell stench of race, and that odor permeates any messaging on the matter.

trying to skip to that point is also counterproductive.

there is lasting damage from prior behavior and many people are inspired by the SEO of mentioning the those adjectives such as African American or female. Otherwise the audience really wouldn't see it and wouldn't know.

its just SEO.

if mentioning that someone productive or accomplished was also black or a woman is not a search engine optimization for you then just ignore it because it wasn't for you.

The fact that you’re getting downvoted speaks volumes to the HN zeitgeist...

I understand a common thought:

A lot of times it isn't because people disagree with the observation or have strongly held beliefs that it didn't happen while they go parrot crime stats as if it all happens in a vacuum.

It's more so that they don't want to contribute to that train of thought, the idea that enough recognition has already been done. The idea that continuing to spend energy on this removes opportunities from them or matters they care more about.

That approach still ignores the utility of having these discussions.

The discussion can be about how to leverage the productive capital of society, instead of having apathy for people that aren't succeeding in supposed merit-based systems and hoping everyone just stops talking about it.

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