I've just finished watching "Hidden Figures", a current Hollywood film that focuses on Katherine Johson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, and their important roles in the early stages of NASA's attempts at manned flight.
SPOILER ALERT BELOW
Hidden Figures has been nominated for 3 Oscars (including Best Picture) and I enjoyed it a lot. It also includes many powerful messages, not least, the important role that African-American females played in 1960's US science.
Our community needs to do more to increase recognition of non-white non-male scientists and mathematicians. A single film can't make up for all of our prior mistakes but, as my PhD advisor used to say, "at least the progress vector is now pointing in the right direction".
Hidden Figures also includes some gems relating to scientific computing. There can't be many films where the trumpets sound and Euler's method rides over the hill (albeit in small steps) to save the day. I wasn't quite sure but I thought one of the screenshots in that portion of the film was of relevant pages from Numerical Recipes.
I also enjoyed watching Dorothy Vaughan beat the IBM programmers at their own game after she had to taught herself FORTRAN from a library book. It must have been quite a ride.
All in all, a must-see for anyone that likes the history of scientific computing.
It's also a very good film. The audience clapped at the end at our showing, and judging from the pre-film conversations I overheard, I doubt if many were regular readers of this type of blog :-)
SPOILER ALERT BELOW
Hidden Figures has been nominated for 3 Oscars (including Best Picture) and I enjoyed it a lot. It also includes many powerful messages, not least, the important role that African-American females played in 1960's US science.
Our community needs to do more to increase recognition of non-white non-male scientists and mathematicians. A single film can't make up for all of our prior mistakes but, as my PhD advisor used to say, "at least the progress vector is now pointing in the right direction".
Hidden Figures also includes some gems relating to scientific computing. There can't be many films where the trumpets sound and Euler's method rides over the hill (albeit in small steps) to save the day. I wasn't quite sure but I thought one of the screenshots in that portion of the film was of relevant pages from Numerical Recipes.
I also enjoyed watching Dorothy Vaughan beat the IBM programmers at their own game after she had to taught herself FORTRAN from a library book. It must have been quite a ride.
All in all, a must-see for anyone that likes the history of scientific computing.
It's also a very good film. The audience clapped at the end at our showing, and judging from the pre-film conversations I overheard, I doubt if many were regular readers of this type of blog :-)
Ended up in the move sort-of by accident. Loved it!
ReplyDeleteGreat - I am glad you enjoyed it!
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