Joylette Hylick, the daughter of Katherine Johnson, and Congressman Bobby Scott at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony at the U.S. Capitol

BVN — NASA’s first black female engineer Mary Jackson and mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan were honored posthumously with the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 19.

Members of their families attended the ceremony to accept the awards. The work of the women paved the way to the first U.S. astronauts being able to successfully orbit earth.

All three “hidden figures” attended HBCUs, which was noted at the Gold Medal ceremony by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The author of the 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race,” Margot Lee Shetterly was also at the gold medal ceremony.

“Hidden Figures” refers to a group of African American women mathematicians and engineers who worked at NASA (previously NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) and made crucial contributions to the U.S. space program during the mid-20th century. Their work had been overlooked for decades due to both gender and racial biases. The term became widely known after the 2016 book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, which was adapted into a popular film of the same name.

“At a time in America when our nation was divided by color and often by gender, these women dared to step into the fields where they had previously been unwelcome,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson at the crowded ceremony. A contingent from Dallas, Texas was present including the son of the late Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson who proposed legislation for the women to be recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal.  Johnson passed away on Dec. 31, 2023.

Katherine Johnson was a mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury and the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. Johnson was known for her skills in celestial navigation and she helped ensure the success of major space missions. She was a member of AKA sorority, was a school teacher at a black public school in Marion, Virginia and lived with her family in Newport News and then Hampton since the 1950s. Johnson died at a retirement home in Newport News in Feb. 2020, at age 101. Johnson’s daughters Joylette Hylick and Katherine Moore were in attendance at the Gold Medal ceremony.

Dorothy Vaughan was a mathematician and computer scientist who became the first African American woman to supervise a group of staff at NASA. Vaughan was an expert in FORTRAN, a prominent early programming language, and helped transition from manual computing to electronic computers.

Mary Jackson was an engineer who broke racial barriers by becoming NASA’s first African American female engineer. She worked to promote diversity and equal opportunities for women and minorities in STEM fields.

Christine Darden, who was not featured in the movie Hidden Figures but her career was covered extensively in the book, was an aerospace engineer who specialized in supersonic flight and worked on reducing sonic boom, making key contributions to aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. Darden was also an advocate for women and minorities in science and engineering at NASA.

“The pioneers we honor today, these Hidden Figures – their courage and imagination brought us to the Moon. And their lessons, their legacy, will send us back to the Moon… and then…imagine – just imagine – when we leave our footprints on the red sands of Mars. Thanks to these people who are part of our NASA family, we will continue to sail on the cosmic sea to far off cosmic shores,” saidNASA Administrator and former U.S. Senator Bill Nelson during the ceremony.