"I wrote so many drafts of this book"

All About Space speaks with Margot Shetterly about her book, Hidden Figures, the challenges of uncovering that history and why human computers are suddenly looming large in the public consciousness

- By Sarah Lewin

Was it challenging to track down the history of Langley’s woman computers?

One [challenge] was trying to figure out exactly how the segregated group of black women came to Langley. Trying to track down when it happened, who was there, where they were originally sent to work, because they had to be in a segregated office. What I concluded is that it was not quite a handshake deal, but that everyone kind of quietly agreed this was going to happen, and it happened. It wasn’t something that happens with a lot of fanfare. Tracking that down, it was really like there’s an article in the newspaper The Norfolk Journal and Guide, which announced the first woman going there, and then all of a sudden their names started appearing in the Langley newsletter.

How did you choose which women to focus on?

You couldn’t tell this as a single person’s story. This is the story of broad success of women overall, and African-American women specifically, in a job category that it’s simply assumed they don’t exist. During a time of Jim Crow segregation, during a time when women frequently weren’t even allowed to have credit cards in their own names, here were these women – large numbers of women – doing very high-level mathematical work at one of the highest scientific institutions in the world at that time. I wanted it to be a story that could show that broad group, but at the same time, in order to make it interesting you have to choose the people with the most compelling stories.

Who did you follow?