Pioneering NASA 'Hidden Figure' Evelyn Boyd Granville passes away at age 99

Washington: Trailblazing Black American mathematician Evelyn Boyd Granville passed away at the age of 99. She played a significant role in the early human spaceflight missions and the Apollo program.

The Hollywood film Hidden Figures was inspired by Black women like Evelyn who worked in NASA and made significant contributions but was sidelined.

Granville, one of the first two Black women in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, made groundbreaking contributions to NASA's space missions despite facing racial adversity. Her remarkable journey was featured alongside other Black women in the book and film "Hidden Figures."

She completed her undergraduate studies at Smith College and earned her doctorate degree from Yale University in 1949. Granville then pursued postgraduate studies at the New York University Institute for Mathematics and later joined the faculty at Fisk University.

In 1956, she began working at IBM, and in 1959, she became part of the IBM team contracted by NASA during the early days of the space race. Her responsibilities included programming early mainframe computers and calculating orbital trajectories and safe reentries.

Granville contributed to NASA's Project Vanguard satellite and the first crewed Mercury launches. She also provided technical support to engineers working on the Apollo program, helping with moon landing calculations.

After her work with NASA, Granville became a mathematics professor at California State University, where she taught and wrote textbooks on the subject. In the 1980s, she taught at the University of Texas at Tyler and worked on math enrichment programs for elementary school students.

In 2010, Granville retired to Washington, D.C., following the passing of her husband, Ed Granville. She peacefully passed away at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, on June 27.

A funeral service was held on July 8 in Washington, D.C., to honor the life and legacy of this pioneering figure.