Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician, has died at 101
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The quality of work, done by hand, is just staggering when you think of the consequences that could have transpired if mistakes had been made.
See e.g. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680020624 for Gemini.
The movie also shows Dorothy Vaughan teaching themselves how to program those first machines. Remember that pretty much noone had any programming experience, and there are still pitfalls today for people doing science calculations on a computer.
> As a computer, she calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Even after NASA began using electronic computers, John Glenn requested that she personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight aboard Friendship 7 – the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/katherine-johnson-the-girl-who-...
They were large boxes with nixie tubes, the size of a modern midi-tower PC, only horizontal. They were limited to relatively simple operations, like square root or ln. They were more precise than a slide rule, though.
I told my Dad how lucky we are to be born with various abilities that we then nurture and develop. The sky's the limit when we do the things we were "born" to do.
This lady's mind was really meant to doing such calculations. So good!
I'm not sure if she wanted that attention, but she deserved it. I'm sure, being 97 years old and now getting famous isn't that bad. I can't imagine people taking too many photographs and interviews of here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures#Historical_accu...
but i assume that yes, at least a few had a "go" at it, based on statistical probability alone.
perhaps not everything that can be said about a subject is discussed in grade school?
"I didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job ... and play bridge at lunch. I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it."
the primary character clearly states that there was no feeling of segregation, yet the movie centrally revolves around her direct experience of blatant, overt racisim.
imo, the story is amazing/inspirational on its own without this intentional misrepresentation.
To my recollection (I could be wrong it's been years), the movie didn't focus on her feelings about segregation, it focused on the actual segregation and the effects of that segregation on her daily life (i.e. obstacles that would have been in her way), which is distinctly different from her feelings about said segregation and obstacles...which is what she's referring to in the quote.
The book actually touches on this:
"She knew just as well as any other black person the tax levied upon them because of their color. But she didn’t feel it in the same way. She wished it away, willed it out of existence inasmuch as her daily life was concerned.”
MANY members of different marginalized groups deliberately choose this outlook as a method of self preservation in an attempt to minimize the very real emotional, physical, and spiritual toll created by these -isms. Quite a bit of research on the topic if it's something that interests you. But their choice not to acknowledge the source of these obstacles (i.e. racism) doesn't mean it's not there and it doesn't mean there aren't significant challenges...
I tend to think the sky's the limit, and we all need good mentors. Check out "Stand and Deliver", another great movie, based on a real story.
But it was a pretty huge team effort and you will never know of that boring white middle age man who did equally as important engineering or mathematical work.
There is not necessarily wrong with it but it is pretty funny when I think about famous programmers my mind goes to Ada Lovelace, Margret Hamilton, Grace Hopper, Denis Ritchie and Linus Torvalds.
All great programmers and I know others exists but those are the ones I think I hear the most about I think.
Precisely! They have not gone unrecognized unlike the hundreds of thousands of other NASA ground staff.
> they were ignored for so long.
They never were ignored. They have recently been elevated above all the other NASA ground staff.
His work was not as significant. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Howard_Latimer#Technical... to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Edison_patents and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nikola_Tesla_patents
You know of Watson and Crick, but not Rosalind Franklin. By you, I mean the general you.
You are obviously enormously invested in completely ignoring social conditions women and people of color overcame to do what they did.
Of all things, in a thread on the occasion of her death - for a few, what we get is anger and indignation in reading about this woman's accomplishments. Think about that.
https://theymadethat.com/people/4dm0q9/katherine-johnson
imo it's nice to have a visual of someone's work
The bigger question is, is that what the black bar is for?
Jackie Robinson was a great baseball player but his contributions to the game extend far beyond how he performed on the field.
#BlackHistoryMonth