My most successful forays, be they in grade school and since, have always involved women as prime players. My least successful undertakings have always excluded their participation.
This may not be true generally of all men. But, it is very true for me! I had long marveled at this fact, privately.
But, my reading today in Margot Lee Shetterly's already-classic book, HIDDEN FIGURES (2016), brought it home to me, emphatically! It reads:
"If research production was a measure of career viability--and it was--theoretical aerodynamics might have been the best place in the world to be a female researcher... The leaders of the group clearly valued and cultivated the talent of their female members. Perhaps it was the remove from the brawnier aspects of engineering that made the theoretical group such a productive environment for women....
"Most engineers are good mathematicians. But it was the women who massaged the numbers, swam in the numbers, scrutinized the numbers until their eyes blurred, from the time they set their purses down on the desks in the morning until the time they put on their coats to leave at the end of the day. They checked each other's work and put red dots on the data sheets when they found errors--and there were very, very few red dots. Some of the women were capable of lightening fast mental math, rivaling their mechanical calculating machines for speed and accuracy . Others, like Dorothy Hoover and Doris Cohen, had highly refined understandings of theoretical math , differentiating their way through nested equations ten pages deep with nary an error in sign. The best of the women made names for themselves in accuracy , speed, and insight. But having the independence of mind and the strength of personality to defend your work in front of the most incisive aeronautical minds in the world--that's what got you noticed... That's what marked you as someone who should move ahead."
P. 112, 115.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
HIDDEN FIGURES AND ME
My most successful forays, be they in grade school and since, have always involved women as prime players. My least successful undertakings have always excluded their participation.
This may not be true generally of all men. But, it is very true for me! I had long marveled at this fact, privately.
But, my reading today in Margot Lee Shetterly's already-classic book, HIDDEN FIGURES (2016), brought it home to me, emphatically! It reads:
"If research production was a measure of career viability--and it was--theoretical aerodynamics might have been the best place in the world to be a female researcher... The leaders of the group clearly valued and cultivated the talent of their female members. Perhaps it was the remove from the brawnier aspects of engineering that made the theoretical group such a productive environment for women....
"Most engineers are good mathematicians. But it was the women who massaged the numbers, swam in the numbers, scrutinized the numbers until their eyes blurred, from the time they set their purses down on the desks in the morning until the time they put on their coats to leave at the end of the day. They checked each other's work and put red dots on the data sheets when they found errors--and there were very, very few red dots. Some of the women were capable of lightening fast mental math, rivaling their mechanical calculating machines for speed and accuracy . Others, like Dorothy Hoover and Doris Cohen, had highly refined understandings of theoretical math , differentiating their way through nested equations ten pages deep with nary an error in sign. The best of the women made names for themselves in accuracy , speed, and insight. But having the independence of mind and the strength of personality to defend your work in front of the most incisive aeronautical minds in the world--that's what got you noticed... That's what marked you as someone who should move ahead."
P. 112, 115.
