Public Law No: 116-68 (11/08/2019)
Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act
(Sec. 3) This bill requires the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President pro tempore of the Senate to arrange for the presentation of
one Congressional Gold Medal to Katherine Johnson, in recognition of her service to the United States as a mathematician;
one Congressional Gold Medal to Dr. Christine Darden, for her service to the United States as an aeronautical engineer;
two Congressional Gold Medals in commemoration of the lives of Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, in recognition of their service to the United States during the Space Race; and
one Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of all the women who served as computers, mathematicians, and engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) between the 1930s and the 1970s.
Creola Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020)
President Barack Obama presents former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as professional baseball player Willie Mays, right, looks on, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington.
NASA - Katherine Johnson: A Lifetime of STEM
Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan (September 20, 1910 – November 10, 2008)
Dorothy Vaughan is one of NASA's Hidden Figures. She was the first black female Supervisor, working on the IBM machine. Inducted into the Langley Hall of Honor, June 1, 2017.
Mary Jackson (née Winston; April 9, 1921 – February 11, 2005)
1979 Portrait of Mary Jackson. 2017 Hall of Honor inductee. Langley Research Center NACA and NASA Hall of Honor. In honor and recognition of the ambition and motivation that enabled her career progression from human computer to NASA s first African-American female engineer, and subsequent career supporting the hiring and promotion of other deserving female and minority employees. (me: DEI by another name)
Idk why Vaughan and Jackson were not also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Ask Barack.
Christine Darden (born September 10, 1942, as Christine Mann, age 82)
Christine Darden in the control room of NASA Langley's Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel in 1975.
Darden is one of the researchers featured in the book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016), a history of some of the influential African-American women mathematicians and engineers at NASA in the mid-20th century, by Margot Lee Shetterly.
Idk why she doesn't appear in the movie. It's possibly because she:
... devoted much of her 40-year career in aerodynamics at NASA to researching supersonic flight and sonic booms....
Not on the spaceflight team?
More:
The Incredible Women of Hidden Figures
The Untold History of Women in Science and Technology
Listen to women from across the Administration tell the stories of their personal heroes across the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Share them yourself. Add your own. And honor their legacy by committing to encourage a young woman to pursue a career in science.
Thank you, Obama.
I'm sure there's much much more. This is just where surfing led me.
Whatever your race/s or career/s, Jasmine, you stand on the shoulders of women who went before you.