While the 1950s and 60s were a time in which the country progressed rapidly in science and technology, social progress was more complex. During this time, the United States government poured money into science and technology that could help the war effort (such as fighter jets) and lend the country international prestige (the space program), both of which meant investment in the Langley Research Center where the book is set.

Hidden Figures begins during World War II and takes place largely during the Cold War era, when the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a nuclear arms race and competed to be the first nation to master spaceflight. Shetterly is also the founder of the Human Computer Project, which aims to be a complete record of women who contributed to research at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Hidden Figures was released as both a book and an Oscar-nominated movie in 2016. Sloan Foundation and from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. To support her writing, Shetterly has received fellowships from the Alfred P.

After marrying writer Aran Shetterly, the two moved to Mexico in 2005 to start a magazine for Anglophone expats in Mexico, and Shetterly began writing and researching Hidden Figures while living in Mexico in 2010. She attended the University of Virginia, where she studied business, and then she moved to New York, where she worked at several prestigious investment banking firms and media startups. Her father was a climate scientist at the NASA-Langley Research Center and her mother was an English Professor at Hampton University. Margot Lee Shetterly was raised in a middle class black community in Hampton, Virginia.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly