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Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

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gain, nearly all the women still worked<br />

at the behest of an engineer. It was the<br />

engineer who determined what problems<br />

to investigate, designed the experiments,<br />

and defined the assignments for the<br />

mathematicians. Engineers gave direction<br />

to the craftsmen who made the wind<br />

tunnel models and to the technicians and<br />

mechanics who manipulated the models.<br />

It was the engineer who faced the firingsquad<br />

editorial review board to defend<br />

the collective effort represented by the<br />

research report, and it was the engineer<br />

who took the victory lap when the report<br />

was published.<br />

Most of the country’s top engineering<br />

schools didn’t accept women. Kitty<br />

O’Brien Joyner, the laboratory’s only<br />

female engineer from the time Pearl<br />

Young left until the middle of the 1950s,

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