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The Congressional Gold Medal was presented to the families of
Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine
Darden at the U.S. Capitol. Darden watched the ceremony from her
Connecticut home.
A medal was also given to all the women who worked as
mathematicians, engineers and “human computers” in the U.S.
space program from the 1930s to 1970s.
"By honoring them, we honor the very best of our country’s
spirit,” said author Margot Lee Shetterly, whose book “Hidden
Figures” was adapted into a film in 2016.
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics – a precursor to
NASA – hired hundreds of women to crunch numbers for space
missions. The Black women hired worked in a segregated unit of
female mathematicians at what is now NASA's Langley Research
Center in Virginia.
Johnson's hand-written calculations helped John Glenn become the
first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. She was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 – the nation’s highest
civilian honor.
Vaughan rose to become NASA's first Black supervisor and Jackson
was NASA’s first Black female engineer. Darden is best known for
her sonic boom research.
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