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Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

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with one hand and just as quickly erased<br />

them with the other. He moved from one<br />

topic to the next, making no concession to<br />

their bewildered expressions. But<br />

Katherine, serious and bespectacled with<br />

fine curly hair, made such quick work of<br />

the course catalog that Claytor had to<br />

create advanced classes just for her.<br />

“You would make a good research<br />

mathematician,” Dr. Claytor said to his<br />

star seventeen-year-old undergraduate<br />

after her sophomore year. “And,” he<br />

continued, “I am going to prepare you for<br />

this career.”<br />

Claytor had taken an honors math<br />

degree from Howard University in 1929<br />

and, like Dorothy Vaughan, had received<br />

an offer to join the inaugural class of the<br />

school’s math graduate program. Dean<br />

Dudley Weldon Woodard supervised

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