Katherine Johnson works at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia in 1961, alongside her colleagues Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan. All of them are African-American women; the unit is segregated by race and sex. White supervisor Vivian Mitchell assigns Katherine to assist Al Harrison’s Space Task Group, given her skills in analytic geometry. She becomes the first Black woman on the team; head engineer Paul Stafford is especially dismissive.Hidden Figures 2016 Movie Download.
Mary is assigned to the space capsule heat shield team, where she immediately identifies a design flaw. Encouraged by her team leader Karl Zielinski, a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor, Mary applies for an official NASA engineer position. She is told by Mitchell that, regardless of her mathematics and physical science degree, the position requires additional courses. Mary files a petition for permission to attend all-white Hampton High School, despite her husband’s opposition. Pleading her case in court, she wins over the local judge by appealing to his sense of history, allowing her to attend night classes.Hidden Figures 2016 Movie Download.
Katherine meets African-American National Guard Lt. Col. Jim Johnson, who voices skepticism about women’s mathematical abilities. He later apologizes and begins spending time with Katherine and her three daughters. The Mercury 7 astronauts visit Langley, and astronaut John Glenn goes out of his way to greet the West Area women. Katherine impresses Harrison by solving a complex mathematical equation from redacted documents, as the Soviet Union‘s successful launch of Yuri Gagarin increases pressure to send American astronauts into space.
Harrison confronts Katherine about her “breaks,” unaware that she is forced to walk a half-mile (800 meters) to use the nearest colored people’s bathroom. She angrily explains the discrimination she faces at work, which leads Harrison to knock down the “Colored Bathroom” sign and abolish bathroom segregation. He allows Katherine to be included in high-level meetings to calculate the space capsule’s re-entry point. Stafford makes Katherine remove her name from reports, insisting that computers cannot author them, and her work is credited solely to Stafford.