NASA Mathematicians Depicted In ‘Hidden Figures’ Awarded With Nation’s Highest Civilian Honor

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Mathmatician Mary Jackson, the first black woman engineer at NASA poses for a photo at work at NASA Langley Research Center in 1977 in Hampton, Virginia


Photo:

Bob Nye/NASA/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images)


The group of Black female mathematicians whose work for

NASA

in the 1960s inspired the Oscar-nominated movie

Hidden Figures

were awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan were recognized posthumously with the Congressional Gold Medal for helping pave the way for the first American astronaut to successfully orbit the Earth.

It was thanks to Johnson’s hand-written calculations that John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Vaughan went on to become NASA’s first Black supervisor and Jackson is counted as NASA’s first Black female engineer.

Their families attended the Capitol Hill ceremony to accept the awards on their behalf. Christine Darden, who was also recognized for her sonic boom research, watched the ceremony from her Connecticut home.

Joylette Hylick and Katherine Moore (daughters of Katherine Johnson) accept the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol on Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images


House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered opening remarks during the ceremony. According to

ABC News

, he described the women as « giants on whose shoulders all of those astronauts actually stood at a time …

when our nation was divided by color

and often by gender. »

« These women dared to step into the fields where they had previously been unwelcomed. They excelled in science and math and made groundbreaking contributions in aeronautics. But these women didn’t just crunch numbers and solve equations for the space program, » Johnson said. « They actually laid the very foundation upon which our rockets launched and our astronauts flew and our nation soared. »

A member of the U.S. Capitol Police carries a Congressional Gold Medal for Katherine Johnson during a ceremony on Capitol Hill on September 18, 2024 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images


Wednesday’s ceremony came nearly five years after the passage of the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act, which was introduced by the late Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in 2019.

« Acknowledging the many women who have not been given the recognition they deserve for their contributions to technological advancement and competitiveness in the US has become one of my greatest privileges as a Member of Congress,” Johnson, who died December 23, 2023, said in a statement at the time.

Congratulations!