Women Made Important Contributions in Aeronautics

Shetterly’s main theme in Hidden Figures is that women made some very important contributions in the field of aeronautics. Shetterly makes a point in the Prologue of saying that while this book focuses on black women, there were many other women who made advancements in aeronautics possible. She set out to tell the history of the women who worked at NACA and then NASA not as the history of women, but as a part of the larger story of the history of America.

Through her book, Shetterly shows that before computers were a part of everyday life, women performed the complex calculations that were necessary to the research and advancements in airplanes and eventually in space travel that took place at Langley. It was necessary to hire women to perform this work because there was a great demand for advancements in air...