Image credit: With many thanks, this photo was provided courtesy of the National Visionary Leadership Project. This image should not be used for commercial use.
Space travel relies on maths and luckily Evelyn Boyd Granville had just the right expertise to help out in the 1950’s. The second black women to gain a PhD in maths in the US, her work on the software that analysed trajectories of space crafts and orbits paved the way for the Apollo space program. As well as writing programs she also wrote books, school maths books and created maths lessons for kids who struggled with maths. Having retired from space work, she became a computer science and maths professor and a fierce advocate for STEM.
Read more about Evelyne’s work on the cs4fn website.
CLASSROOM IDEAS
History and PSHE&C. Find out about the early space race and how women, like Evelyn Boyd Granville contributed to missions. Read about Evelyn’s career and all the different jobs that she has done. Think about your own goals, what work would you like to do? What barriers might you have to overcome to reach your goals?
This work was supported by the Institute of Coding, which is supported by the Office for Students (OfS).
Teaching London Computing: A RESOURCE HUB from CAS LONDON & CS4FN 