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Katherine Johnson: NASA's Pioneering Female Physicist (thenewstack.io)
destinyland writes: Tuesday's State of the Union address included a shout-out to Katherine Johnson, the pioneering African American mathematician and physicist who calculated the trajectory of Alan Shepherd's 1961 space trip. "Her reputation was so strong that John Glenn asked her to recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth," notes one technology reporter. NASA policy at the time was to not acknowledge the female contributors to scientific papers, though "She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science," according to one NASA official, noting that her impact literally reaches all the way to the moon. At a ceremony in November, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the 97-year-old pioneer continues to encourage young people to also pursue careers in technology, science, engineering and math.
The article says "The practice in 1960 would have been not to list the female Computers as formal co-authors". The blurb above replaces "Computers" with "contributors", painting a false and offensive picture.
Today in many fields it is common to only include as authors of a paper those who have had creative scientific input. A common example is research assistants who collate data, or technical staff who build lab equipment, but the example of someone who did a numerical computation for the author is not uncommon. Most "computers" simply did the computations, which was certainly an important contribution to the research, but not necessarily the kind of contribution that makes one an author of a paper.
Good thing she lived to 97!
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If only we as a society can now stop thinking of these people as abberations just on the basis of gender and other genetic factors. Geniuses in general are rare, so if you’re looking for them, the last thing you want to do is summarily exclude any segment of any population, simply because YOU believe some of their characteristics correlate less with genius.
I was reading a journal paper from the 1970’s or something that presented average IQs for different genetic groups. They found the average Asian IQ to be higher tna the average Caucasian IQ, which was higher than the average African IQ. However, in every case, the standard deviation was very high. This guarantees that geniuses would be found in large populations. (Of course, none of this accounts for aspects of intelligence not considered by IQ, like social ability.)
Of course, racism isn’t really about IQ. IQ is sometimes used as an *excuse* for racism, but if that were not a factor, racists would find another excuse. Bigotry in general is about deciding that someone is incompetent or inferior on the basis of superficial traits. It becomes *criminal* when you actively interfere with someone’s life on the basis of a prejudgement like this.
I’m hoping that highlighting women and other marginalized groups and their contributions to science and society as a whole will gradually enlighten the human race.
NASA policy at the time was to not acknowledge the female contributors to scientific papers, though "She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science,"
We should acknowledge it as such and not put it down to some SWJ agenda
In 100 years, you’ll be right.
We still live in a society that needs to be *reminded* that race and gender are socially worthless predictors of one’s abilities. In the 1960’s, people could be openly bigoted and sexist. Today, they’ve all just moved into the closet. Moreover, there are some bigoted and sexist ideas that are so deeply embedded in our culture that people aren’t even aware of it. Personally, when I was in the 7th grade and was bussed to a school in the middle of the ghetto, I developed a very negative impression of black people. I have to remind myself that if I’d gone to the 7th grade in a school that was in the middle of a trailor park, that I would have an equally bad impression of white people. Technically, people should be free to harbor bigoted thoughts, but as a society, we have to make it clear that *acting* on those feelings is as criminal as discrimination on the basis of *any* superficial characteristic.
Africans are widely [weasel words] accepted [by whom?] to have superior [reference needed] social ability [definition needed].
"She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science," Someone doesn't know what literally means.
BTW it should be possible to find it in the archives. NASA records and documents everything. Richard Feynman suggested something trivial. He noticed they were marking the bolts at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock positions to help align solid booster rocket section assembly. He suggesting marking the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock bolts in addition to help them better. NASA studied the suggestion for two years and rejected it because the documentation update would be prohibitive. That is the level of documentation they maintain. I am sure it would be possible to find the long forgotten women contributors and right the wrong.
We award Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously after several decades. We restored Robert E Lee's citizenship decades after he died. Gen Lee's application for citizenship with formal sworn renunciation of his allegiance to Confederacy was taken home as a personal souvenir by the Secretary of State and was found in attic after several decades.
If restoring that traitor's citizenship status after a century is deemed to be important, giving credit to women scientists for their contribution to NASA is important too. We can and we should find the historical wrong and right it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Africans are widely accepted to have superior social ability. That is a form of intelligence not accounted for by IQ. Your implication that Africans are dumber on the basis of IQ conveniently ignores that fact. But then, bigots and creationists are really good at paying attention only to whatever skewed interpretation of the facts supports their case
Averaging intelligence by race means:
Not one goddamned thing. Why some people take a metric, one of the most personal ones at that, and try to apply it to an entire race or gender is amazing. And remarkably stupid.
Does average intelligence by race make Bill O'Reilly more intelligent than Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Does the average age of Eskimos in Alaska mean that all Eskimos in Alaska are that age?
So while I'm not completely convinced of the veracity of the IQ by race statistics in the first place, even if true, it doesn't tell me one thing about the person of a particular race I might meet, so it's like the fact that "It's warmer down South than it is in the winter".
What is more ironically amusing is that people who use irrelevant statistics to determine something as personal as individual traits such as intelligence are ironically showing a bit of stupidity themselves.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's a large amount of anti-male sexism going on today, you are correct about that.
I share your optimism that in 100 years, we won't have to worry about a misandrist society that leads to the conditions where 93% of work fatalities are men, 80% of suicides are men, 77% of homicide victims are men.
She wasn't an engineer. She was a mathematician and physicist. Don't demote her to engineer just to make yourself feel better.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's something that a particular set of racists do whenever they are faced with a brilliant person of a different race. The only way they can make themselves feel better under those circumstances is to point to some discredited "scientific study" that demonstrates their intellectual superiority as a group..
You are welcome on my lawn.
You do have to accept that over-compensation will happen. White men used to dominate authority in the US. Actually, they still do, even if we’ve developed the maturity to accept a president with brown skin. Given the stranglehold white men have had and the efforts that everyone else have had to go through to break that down, we’re naturally going to go through a period where they get a lot of backlash. Some of that is deserved on the basis of them not relinquishing control earlier than they did. If that kind of overcompensation continues, then it’ll develop into a serious problem. But right now, CEO positions in America, for instance, are dominated by men. Why aren’t there more women in these positions? It’s most likely because we have conditioned them to not seek positions like that and conditioned everyone else to dislike women who behave “unladylike,” which means whatever we want it to mean when finding a reason to dislike women acting outside of the box they’ve been put in. At some point, we’ll produe a generation of women who have finally managed to escape that social conditioning, and that will come when society as a whole accepts their equality. Then there will no longer be any back-lash against men anymore either.
*sigh...* Why do I bother feeding the trolls? Oh well, here goes, mostly for the benefit of everyone else who might have accidentally read your incredibly racist, stupid post.
The AVERAGE IQ of Africans is twenty or more points below that of whites. Care to discuss? One genius African doesn't negate that fact - meaning that the more Africans there are in a white country, the worse it becomes for whites. Which is why Africans don't want to live around their own kind, in AFRICA.
So, apparently, is yours for not knowing that racism is responsible for differences in things like average IQ and earning potential of African-Americans. African-Americans are just as capable of learning and performing as "whites" when put into an environment conducive to learning and free of the systemic racism that has plagued this country since its inception. If it weren't for people like you, there wouldn't be such differences.
And the likely reason most "Africans" don't want to live around their own kind is because the people you're calling "Africans" aren't, in fact, African. They were born here, grew up here, lived all of their lives here, have all of their friends and families here, and are integral to the culture that defines us as a society. They're not "African" any more than you're "European" because of your likely heritage, and making such idiotic statements is like claiming that you don't want to live around your own kind, in EUROPE.
And, of course, that completely neglects the fact that most people of African heritage in the United States aren't here because their ancestors came here voluntarily, they were shackled and forced to relocate against their will, likely by those who were your ancestors. And, of course, that unless you're a full-blooded Native American, you're just as much an "invader" here as those you look down upon--except even worse, because your ancestors came here willingly and by force.
So please, stop being such a tool, and the cause of the very problems that you're bemoaning.
She authored the textbooks that were used in universities across the country. These books were written as they went, because the things in the textbooks had never been done before. She wrote them. As in, put pen to paper and wrote the books used in classrooms. Thus, she literally wrote the textbooks on rocket science. And the quote in the article is from the Deputy Director of NASA, who, methinks, understands the definition better than yourself.
Sorry, this comment was meant for the parent. She wrote textbooks in the 50s and 60s and I assume they've been updated by now. Also, did it occur to you that there might actually be more than one textbook on the subject before dissing her? BTW, the quote, as you can see, came from a deputy director of NASA, who would be in a better position to make this comment than yourself.
Besides Godwin's Law, let's not forget the Canadians when Avro cancelled the Arrow and Avrocar programs that resulted in many Canuck engineers migrating south to the US that gave NASA a huge pool of talent for the space program.
mfwright@batnet.com
No actually I don't. It's unacceptable that virtually no one cares that the biggest cause of death in men under 45 is suicide. Very few men have power and wealth. The rest of us just try to get by as best we can. Treating us like shit is a disgrace that will only lead to problems.
Vera Rubin, who did a lot of the early research on dark matter, was not allowed to use the telescope at Caltech specifically because of her gender (eventually the policy did change). Also prevented from enrolling in Princeton's graduate astronomy program because women were not allowed until 1975.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
According to The Daily Stormer, we are!
No actually I don't. It's unacceptable that virtually no one cares that the biggest cause of death in men under 45 is suicide.
First, that's factually incorrect. According to the CDC, suicides are number two, after "Unintentional Injuries".
That's right, the leading cause of death in men under 45 is "hold my beer and watch this". Suicide is second Maybe these are the biggest cause of death in men under 45 because men's general health overall is so good that just about the only thing that will take them out is if they decide to do it themselves, through self-harm or simple stupidity?
Nope. Must be the feminazis.
It's something that a particular set of racists do whenever they are faced with a brilliant person of a different race. The only way they can make themselves feel better under those circumstances is to point to some discredited "scientific study" that demonstrates their intellectual superiority as a group..
But they conveniently forget that "whites" were not at the top of that list. So not only are some white people stupid enough to believe that some long discredited pseudoscicen can tell them how to instantly determind an individual's intelligence, they manage to ignore that their studies show that caucasions should not be the leaders.
An interesting link I found about Jay Gould's 1981 book, "The Mismeasure of Man" is interesting reading.
Perhaps some of the material can be of further use to these racists:
German brains weigh on average 100 grams more than French brains - as "found by a German scientist.
Early 20th Century H.H. Goddard gave intelligence tests to immigrants, and "found out" that 83% of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the Russians were "feeble minded".
Robert Yerkes tested Military recruits and "showed" that the average American had a mental age of 13 years.. He also "showed" that 37 percent of whites and 89% of negros had a mental aage of less than 13 years.
This kind of bullshit was used to justify segregation laws, most in the south.
And it has all been discredited. At very best, it is pointless, at worst, it starts to resemble eugenics.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Actually work such as Goddards was mostly used for anti-immigration justification. The IQ tests heavily revolved around American culture with questions like who won the World Series in 19xx.
Throw some culture questions into an IQ test and you're going to select for that culture being smarter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Probably most of that is "hold my beer for a sec while I drive around this curve at 90."
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men's general health overall is so good
Confirmed for troll by stating a bald faced lie about well-established facts. Men have 1.4x the death ratio of women, and it's higher in all major health-related categories except Alzheimers. Source: http://www.health.harvard.edu/...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Today, they’ve all just moved into the closet.
No, not all of them. Some are merely bigots who are passive-aggressive, but some are completely sincere.
It's not as simple as the stereotypes in either direction, but it's the glass half-full reality that we have to deal with.
That's no demotion. Calling her an engineer means that she did stuff of practical application (as opposed to purely academic work).
She worked at NASA in "key scientific and engineering positions". This is applied science, or engineering.
In the 1960’s, people could be openly bigoted and sexist. Today, they’ve all just moved into the closet.
You evidently haven't been paying much attention to the US presidential campaign.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Well done.
Yes, it is second, and used to be much lower on the list. It started to rise when family courts became extremely pro-mother and extremely anti-father. This caused an extreme spike in divorced fathers with no meaningful contact with their kids, extreme financial hardship, and likely the worst of it, numerous false accusations of abusing the wife and children made by the wife for the purpose of getting sole custody and maximum child support. Also there are absolutely no repercussions for the woman making these false accusations. This is the primary reason the suicide rate for men is so high and it was directly caused by feminism being allowed into our court system.
That is what they have always been threatening.