
KNOWING OUR UNSUNG HEROES S2 EP1
In the small town of Hampton, Virginia, in 1918, a girl was born into a world of segregation and limited opportunity. Her father, a research scientist, encouraged her curiosity, but as a Black woman in mid-20th-century America, she faced relentless barriers in education and employment. She excelled in mathematics, earning degrees despite discrimination, and joined NASA’s Langley Research Center as a “human computer”—performing complex calculations by hand for engineers.
Her brilliant mind proved indispensable: she calculated trajectories for the first American in space (Alan Shepard), verified the orbital path for John Glenn’s historic Friendship 7 flight (insisting on double-checking the new electronic computer’s results), and contributed to the Apollo lunar missions.

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