These Women Saw Our Universe as Never Before. Here's Their Story.

In the mid-20th century, women mathematicians working as human "computers" contributed to some of NASA's highest achievements.At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the foothills above Los Angeles, they calculated orbital trajectories for missions heading to space — a tale told in Nathalia Holt's recent Rise of the Rocket Girls. At the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., they crunched the numbers from experiments in aeronautical wind tunnels, all the better to steer astronauts on launch and landing through Earth's atmosphere.   Continue reading...