2016 saw the book, and shortly after, the film release of “Hidden Figures”, a non-fiction piece examining the lives of African American female experts – including Katherine Johnson, the late Mary Jackson and the late Dorothy Vaughan – during the 20^th century. Professionals who worked at NASA and helped achieve the organization’s success in the Space Race: a spaceflight competition between the U.S. and USSR.

The author of “Hidden Figures”, Margot Lee Shetterly researched the history of NACA and NASA’s “human computers” – a group of female mathematicians, scientists and engineers, who helped out with the organization’s space programs. The movie adaptation was released worldwide in 2017 and won the SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Shetterly has also become the founder of The Human Computer Project, a digital archive that tells the stories of NACA and NASA’s female experts from the 1930s to 1980s.

• Global box office gross: Over $230 million