GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Maybe you're thinking of seeing a film on the big screen this weekend.
Did you know one movie in theaters has a connection to the Triad?
"Hidden Figures" tells the inspiring story of three African-American women who worked as "human computers" at Langley Research Center and helped the United States win the space race.
But one woman helped pave the way for the trailblazers portrayed in the film - that was UNCG alumna Virginia Tucker.
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Tucker graduated in 1930. She was one of five women to join the first human computer pool at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now Langley Research Center) in 1935. Langley was the main research center for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which we now know as NASA.
When World World II broke out in 1939, more women were recruited as computers to conduct critical research for the military.
By the early 1940s, Tucker was the head computer, tasked with managing hundreds of women in computing sessions across the labratory.
Margot Lee Shetterly is the author of the book which inspired the movie "Hidden Figures." In her book, Shetterly writes:
“Over the course of twelve years, Virginia Tucker had ascended from a subprofessional employee to the most powerful woman at the lab. She had done so much to transform the position of computer from a proto-clerical job into one of the laboratory’s most valuable assets. … Between 1942 and 1946, four hundred Langley computers received training on Tucker’s watch.”
In 1947, Tucker left civil service for a position as an aerodynamicist at Northrop Corporation, one of the nation's leading aviation companies.
Although she was no longer at at Langley, Tucker's legacy paved the way for female mathematicians, including the three African-American women whose stories are told in "Hidden Figures".
The film opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, January 6.
