Hidden Figures

I recently watched a film which I’ve been meaning to watch for a while and whilst I’m not a film critic, I feel the need to share my thoughts on a film which I found joyful and inspiring.

Hidden Figures is a film about three black women who work for NASA, based on the true stories of three women, Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan. Each of these women have their own story, unique in it's challenges and inspiring moments and I strongly encourage everyone to watch this film to learn to listen and watch their stories.

There was one which stood out and resonated with me the most of the three, and that was the life and career of Dorothy Vaughan. What a wonderful, inspirational woman. As well as the obvious narrative of space exploration at NASA, the film loosely threads a sub plot of the transition of computing from human computers to electronic computers, a topic of deep interest to myself as a programmer.

Throughout the film, Dorothy showed character and leadership. Ultimately leading her to transitioning her own role as a people manager of human computers to, as the epilogue of the film reveals, a supervisor of the Programming Department at NASA. Picking up something new, diving into the deep end of a task is such a courageous thing to do and I found this to be such an inspirational narrative in the film of course, but also in the life of Dorothy herself.

Go watch the film, learn about an important part of history and be inspired.