West Area Computers

The West Area Computing Unit (West Area Computers) is the name of an all-African American group of female mathematicians that existed at the NASA Langley Research Center from 1943 through 1958. The group, a subset of the hundreds of female mathematicians who began careers in aeronautical research during World War II, was originally subject to Virginia's Jim Crow laws, requiring them to use segregated bathroom and cafeterias.^[1]

Originally supervised by white Section Heads, the group was eventually put in the charge of Dorothy Vaughan, an African American mathematician who worked at the center from 1943 through 1971.

Mathematician Katherine Johnson, who in 2015 was named a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, started in the West Area Computing group in 1953. She was subsequently reassigned to Langley's Flight Research Division, where she performed notable work including providing the trajectory analysis for astronaut John Glenn's MA-6 Project Mercury orbital spaceflight.^[2] Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson also worked in the West Area Computing Unit,^[3] and the work of all three women is featured in the 2017 film Hidden Figures.

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