The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and...

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these "colored computers," as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America's...

Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them despite their groundbreaking successes.

"Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as 'human computers' used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in...

"The astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg--a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat--drawing on Mehlberg's own unpublished memoir. World War II and the Holocaust have given rise to many stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the remarkable, unknown story of "Countess Janina Suchodolska," a Jewish woman who rescued more...

The woman at the heart of the New York Times bestseller and Oscar-winning film "Hidden Figures" shares her personal journey from child prodigy in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia to NASA human computer and her integral role in the early years of the U.S. space program. In 2015, at the age of ninety-seven, Johnson became a global celebrity for her pioneering work as a mathematician on NASA's first flight into space. In her memoir Johnson provides...

"La extraordinaria historia de Katherine Johnson, la audaz matemática que calculó la ruta de vuelo para el primer aterrizaje en la luna." --Back cover. "You've likely heard of the historic Apollo 13 [mission]. But do you know about the mathematical genius who made sure that Apollo 13 returned safely home? As a child, Katherine Johnson loved to count. She counted the steps on the road, the number of dishes and spoons she washed in the kitchen sink,...

An account of the previously unheralded contributions of NASA's African-American women mathematicians to America's space program describes how they were segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws in spite of their successes.