Please join us on Wednesday, April 12 when Math club will feature a talk from graduate student Tori Day titled “Hidden Figures: The African American Women Mathematicians of NASA Who
Helped Fuel America’s Space Achievements”. We meet from 5-6 pm in LGRT 1528. Pizza and soda will be provided. Tori’s abstract is below.
In this talk, we will explore the lives and times of three of the central
figures of NASA (then NACA)’s West Computing Group: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary
Jackson, and Katherine Johnson. Along the way we will discuss their
contributions to mathematics and engineering and the Space Race, as well
as the challenges they overcame and the roads they paved. We will end
with a basic and broad overview of a paper co-authored by Katherine
Johnson in 1960 entitled Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for
Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position.