JONATHAN JANSEN: When hidden talent is allowed to reach its potential
'As these black women overcome the obstacles facing them, they solve the complex mathematics and the even more complex human relations'
Seldom does a movie audience spontaneously applaud a film they had just watched. You felt the goose-bumps on the skin and the lump in the throat throughout the 127-minute movie. It was vintage Hollywood, taking you through the pain of watching three black women being denied their brilliance as young mathematicians in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, only to become key players in the successful launch of a manned satellite into space.It was the early 1960s and the Russians had caused consternation in the Americas with the launch of Sputnik at a time when the space wars were about national pride and international pre-eminence between the superpowers. Nasa was under enormous political pressure to catch up with the Soviets but this required mastery of complex mathematical calculations for which the white men of the agency simply did not have the intellectual nous. The solution was right there, among them, in these human computers with their incredible mathematical skil...
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