Hidden Figures (2016)

[mklabgr]

Hidden Figures is a 2016 biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s nonfiction book. It tells the story of three African-American women mathematicians—Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson—who worked at NASA during the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s. Their mathematical and technical work contributed to major American space missions, while they also faced racial segregation and gender discrimination. Johnson became particularly important for her calculations concerning spacecraft trajectories, Vaughan became a supervisor and learned FORTRAN programming, and Jackson pursued the education necessary to become an engineer.

The film emphasizes mathematics, scientific achievement, perseverance, and the barriers faced by Black women in STEM. However, it is not a completely literal reconstruction of history: several events were dramatized, timelines were condensed, and some characters were composites. For example, the famous bathroom sequence involving Johnson was substantially different from the historical record, and the fictional character Al Harrison represented a more complicated real NASA management structure. Nevertheless, the film helped bring renewed public attention to Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson and their contributions to the American space program.

FILM