Hidden Figures

Katherine was the youngest child of Joshua and Joylette Coleman, the couple Dorothy and Howard Vaughan met the summer they lived in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, while Howard worked at the Greenbrier. Like Dorothy, Katherine was a precocious student (both graduated from high school at age 15), and after earning a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia State College, she also became a math teacher. A few years later, on the recommendation of her old college’s president, she began a master’s program at West Virginia University. After one semester, however, she and her husband learned they were expecting a child, and she dropped out to become a full-time mother.

Four years later, she was back in the classroom as a teacher. Her earlier dream of becoming a research mathematician seemed farther away than ever, but she would soon get her chance. As Shetterly writes, “Dorothy Vaughan and scores of other former schoolteachers were proving that female research mathematicians weren’t just a wartime measure but a powerful force that was about to help propel American aeronautics beyond its previous limits” (76).