It so good at spreading from host to host and why is it in some hosts and not in others. Why is it not in any of us are fisher mammals. It is in some worms which come from a very Different Branch of the animal kingdom. Perhaps also interesting to us because those worms kill diseases and if you go back there you might be able to kill those diseases, thats a different story, but theres a lot of biology that we dont understand. Like why is it so good at jumping from host to host . Is it just because it spreads vertically throughout the population like i talked about with mosquitoes . Is it also because its so good at jumping horizontally from one host to another. Yes, these are all questions but theres actually a conference that happens every couple years or so. O. Its a very thriving area ofa lf research. So we have gone from cow poop to slime molds and fecal transplant and back again. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversation] that was ed young talking about multitudes. Im review editor of publisher weekly. Tonight on cspan2 we are talking about publisher weeklies best books of 2016 and these are a few of our selections. Up next, an amazing book from the heights of the space age and its called Hidden Figures. The story of the first group of black female mathematicians hired in a Virginia Laboratory under the heights of jim crow laws. Tonight you will hear the author of Hidden Figures. [applause] , the American Dream and the untold story of the black women mathematicians that helped win the space race. She will share her journey about writing this remarkable story that combines the rich intersection of the civil rights era, the space race, the cold war and the movement for gender equality. In anthropologist with an admiration of history, what happened with nasa on this date. September 8, 1967, the surveyor launched. September 8, 1983 and today september 8, 2016 Margot Lee Shetterly publicly launches her book hidden figure. [applause] a little bit on margot. Many of you know her or went to school with her and said they were on the tennis team with her on high school and couldnt wait to see her again. She was born and raised right here in Hampton Virginia. She graduated from the university of virginia with a degree in finance. A journalist, independent researcher, entrepreneur and cocreator of an english monthly magazine inside mexico with her husband aaron. She is the daughter of one of the first nasa blackmail engineers. She grew up knowing many of the women in Hidden Figures. She is the founder of the human computer project and Alfred P Sloan fellow and recipient of the Virginia Foundation for humanities grant. She lives in charlottesville virginia. She said that anonymous in history was usually a woman. Let me say that again. Anonymous in history was usually a woman. Tonight these brilliant women are anonymous no more thanks to margot and her book Hidden Figures. May the names of Catherine Johnson, dorothy vann, mary jackson, actor Christine Darden and the other women who contributed to the space race and change the course of history finally receive their due. Now we gave a few housekeeping notes and i want to remind everyone that her talk is going to be here but the book signing will take place at the Hampton History Museum after words in the great hall. Well walk back across the street and so cspan asked me to say that because they are filming, they ask for more no flash photography. If you want to take a picture please turn your flash off. Please remember remember to silence your phone. Again, i welcome you on behalf of the Hampton History Museum and they invite you to make history with us. Tonight margot is doing just that, making history. It is is with great pleasure and honor that i introduce my friend Margot Lee Shetterly. [applause] deidra, thank you you so much for that amazing introduction. Thank you to the Hampton History Museum which has been incredibly supportive of this Research Since the very beginning. I cant think of anyplace better to publicly launch this endeavor than here in Hampton Virginia, my hometown with my home people, and thank you so much for coming out here tonight. It is actually sort of a wonderful thing that this venue, the speech that im giving now is taking place here at saint johns in a church because it really started six years ago also in his church here in downtown hampton. The First Baptist church, my home church where i grew up and i was sitting in a pew with my parents robert and margaret lee who are here and my husband and we were interviewing a former sunday School Teacher of mine about her career as a mathematician at the research center. None of us had an idea at the time that that first interview would turn into all of this, this Hidden Figures, the book, my first book and a movie, but as exciting as its been to receive that level of enthusiasm, the most gratifying thing for me about these past few years has been learning about my hometown. There is so much that i didnt know, and so much that i didnt know about the people who lived here, the people who i knew growing up here. Writing this book for me has been a way of telling my story and tracing my path from the lives of these groundbreaking women. This is my history, this is your history. This history belongs to all of us. The thrilling part, the mundane part, the hard part and the painful part. All of this has made us who we are today. And so, the fact that we are here in this church across from the Hampton History Museum which sponsored this event, we are so close to Hampton University to the Langley Research center, to the archaeological remains of the grand contraband camp which was the first atomic black settlement in the United States, it simply couldnt be a more fitting venue. Hidden figures follows the lives of four africanamerican women, dorothy vann, mary mary jackson, Catherine Johnson and Christine Darden who is here. [applause] i am so pleased also to let you know that many of the family members of dorothy and mary, and i believe mrs. Johnson are here as well as gloria who is a part of my book, and many other women who worked with them and men who worked with them over at the Langley Research center. Thank you so much for coming and if you see them in the crowd tonight, definitely, i think i see sharon back there, i am just so thrilled that these women who actually lived the history so i could write it are here. So many of us gathered here, we knew these women, we were raised by them or lived with them were worshiped with them or socialized with them worked hot by them or worked with them, and im sure you will agree with me when you say we have learned a tremendous amount from them. So many lessons from these women, from their lives. I have a list that can fill another book with the things that i have learned from them researching their lives, but one of the most timely, i think, and the one that i would like to emphasize tonight is the following, never allow fear to get the best of curiosity and imagination. Sending humans into space is an inherent risky endeavor. It takes a powerful imagination to believe that its possible to land humans on the mood and to bring them back safely. But that adventure, 11 of humanitys greatest had its roots right here in Hampton Virginia. That a black woman could do some of the calculations to get them there, given the time that mightve taken even more imagination to come to fruition, but that happened as well as we know that Catherine Johnson has received from the work that she did on the mercury and apollo missions, most notably on john glenns groundbreaking flight in 1962. People from the brown the United States, indeed indeed from around the world came to work at langley. These women worked alongside people of all backgrounds and they achieved together things that even today, 47 years later we have to stop and marble. Its incredible what is possible when you take the best minds among us and allow their imagination to run free. The narrative of Hidden Figures is pulled through the eyes of these four africanamerican women and it was my mission to use the stories of their lives to tell other stories of world war ii, how it transformed our city, of the ancient days of the cold war, of the hope and the conflict of the civil rights movement, and of the Great Strides that all women have made legally, socially and economically over the course of the 20th century. Scores of black women worked as mathematicians at langley and other National Installations around the country. There were so many names. Sue wilder, eunice smith, barbara holly, Christine Ritchie , irma kinds, there were so many of them, more than i could ever include in this book, but those women were part of a load larger cohort of women. White women like marjorie hanna, dorothy lee, beer vera, mary, barbara, and these women were valedictorians, they were math and science competition winners, they were very smart women and until they came to langley, they thought they would put their masters degrees to work in a classroom. They have also received a fraction of the credit they deserve. Women Work Together with white colleagues to create opportunities for talented women of all backgrounds. An organization that i started called the human computer project, in trying to recover the names of all the women who worked as computer is, mathematicians in engineers of the early days of nasa, not just that langley but at all of the installations over the years. Tonight i would just like to encourage you to get in touch with me if theres a contact form on my website Margot Lee Shetterly. Com. You can get in touch with the museum, but if you know the name of women who were your grandmothers or mothers, ons, colleagues, colleagues, friends, ladies you knew from church, your neighbors please let me know because i would really like to have all of their names so none of these women are in the shadows anymore. Now, all good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. I already knew the end. I am the result of this wonderful history that happened here in Hampton Virginia. My father is retired, my mother is a retired Hampton University professor. I am the proud product of integrated city schools and i graduated from the university of virginia which now accepts men and women from all backgrounds, but that first meeting six years ago led me to ask the question how did this all began . How did she and Catherine Johnson and the many other women that i remember from my childhood and up working at nasa, of all places. Many people know the story of the Space Program which was gaining momentum at it time that a young preacher from atlanta was taking center stage and what was then becoming known as the civil rights movement. Fewer people know that while the start of the Space Program, hampton was the first center for Aeronautical Research and development. Fewer people know that before doctor king, a civil rights leader named Philip Randolph led a campaign to ban discrimination against africanamericans, something that also benefited mexicans, jews, catholics, many other people who had been left out of the new jobs that were coming about as a result of world war ii. In may 1943, almost two years after Franklin Roosevelts executive order, five black women started jobs working as mathematicians at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory so what i would like to do right now is read from the first chapter of my book, Hidden Figures. This is how the story begins. As im reading, remember it all happened here in Hampton Virginia. Chapter 1, a a door opens. Melvin butler, the Personnel Officer at the langley memorial repertory had a problem. The scope and nature was made plain in a telegram with Civil Service chief field operation. This establishment has urgent need for approximately 100 junior mathematicians. One hundred assistant computer is, 75 minor arbitrary apprentices, 125 helper trainees, 30 stenographers and typists. Every morning at 7 00 a. M. , the bowtied butler and his staff bring to life the Station Wagon to the rail station in the bus station and the Ferry Terminal to collect the men and women. So many women each day. More women who had made their way to the lonely plant on the virginia coast. The shadow conveyed the recruits to the door of the Laboratory Service building on the campus of langley field. Upstairs, butler staff whisked them through the first aid station, forms, photos and the oath of office. I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me god. The Civil Servants stand out to take their places in one of the Research Facilities expanding buildings each full as a pod ripe with peace. No sooner had the laboratories had a procurement set the final brick on a new building than his brother set about filling it with new employees. Someone came up with the bright idea of putting two desks headtohead and jury rigging a new piece of furniture in order to fit three workers in a space design for two. In the four years since hitlers troops overran poland and American Interest in the european war converged in conflict, the laboratory complement of 500 odd employees at the close of the decade was on its way to 1500, yet the great war machines swallowed them whole and left them hungry for more. They looked out on this crescentshaped airfield. Only the flow of civilian clothes people heading to the laboratory laboratory, distinguished brick holdings. This two installations had grown up together. The airbase was dedicated to the military air power capability and the laboratory was a civilian Agency Charged with advancing Scientific Understanding of aeronautics and disseminating its findings to the military and private industry. Since the beginning, the army had allowed the laboratory to operate on the campus of the airfield. In close relationship with the army flyers that served as a constant reminder to the engineers that every experiment they conducted had real world implications. The double hanger 210foot long buildings standing sidebyside had been covered in camouflage tape in 1942 to deceive enemy eyes. Its shady interior sheltering the machines from the element. Then and jumpsuits and groups they moved stopping to hover at this wonder that one like pollinating insects, checking them filling them with gas, replacing parts, examining them, becoming one with them and taking off of the heavens for the music of airplane engines and propellers cycling through the various movements that take off, flight and landing played from before sunrise until dust. Each machine sound as unique to its founders as a baby cry to its mother. Then was the base were of the laboratory wind tunnel turning it on demand hurricanes onto the plane. Plane parts, model planes, fullsize planes. Just two years prior with storm clouds gathering, president roosevelt challenged the nation to ramp up the production of airplanes to 50000. Year. It seemed an Impossible Task for an industry but as recently as 1938 had only provided Army Air Corps with 90 planes. Month. Now americas aircraft industry was a production miracle easily surpassing by more than half. It had become the largest industry in the world. The most productive, the most sophisticated, out producing the germans by more than three times and the japanese by nearly five. The facts were clear to all, the final conquest would come. Airplanes were mechanisms for transporting troops and supplies, armed wings for pursuing enemies, launching pads for ship sinking bombs. They reviewed their vehicles before climbing in. Mechanics rolled up their sleeves and sharpened their eyes a faulty fuel tank light, any one of these could cost lives. Even before the plane responded to its pilots, its nature, its very dna from the shape of its wing to its engine had been manipulated, refined, massaged, and deconstructed and recombined by the engineers next door. Long before americas manufacturers placed one of the newly conceived machines into production, they sent a working prototype to the Langley Laboratory so the design can be tested and approved. Nearly every highperformance aircraft model in the