As the United States raced against the Soviet Union to put a man in space during the 1950s and 1960s, NASA tapped the talent of a group of African-American women to serve as the brains behind this major operation. The brilliance of these mathematicians, and their ability to dream big, situates Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson, and the other math whizzes of this project firmly in the pantheon of heroes of U.S. history.
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