Christine Darden, retired member of the Senior Executive Service for NASA’s Langley Research Center and included in the book, “Hidden Figures,” will speak at the 21st annual Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics (NCUWM) on Jan. 26 at the Embassy Suites Lincoln. The conference offers undergraduate female mathematicians the opportunity to discuss their research and to meet other women who share their interest in mathematical sciences.
Darden, whose final assignment at Langley in 2007 was as director of the Office of Strategic Communications and Education, will give the plenary talk “Faster than the Speed of Sound” for a math-focused audience at 2 p.m. in the Regents Ballroom.
Hired by NASA in June 1967 as a Human Computer, Darden will discuss on Saturday her work as a Computer in the Re-Entry Physics Branch while NASA was preparing for Man to walk on the moon. Darden will then discuss how she was transferred to an Engineering Office to begin looking at the possibility of reducing the noise level of a sonic boom. She will present her development of two computer codes and the experimental research that accompanied her work. Darden will culminate her talk with the current status of work in supersonics that is a follow-on to her 25-year career in research.
Darden was recently included in the book, “Hidden Figures” by author Margot Shetterly, as one who stood on the shoulders of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson, the NASA “Human” Computers” who as members of the segregated West Computers contributed to the NASA Space Program in the early 1960s and who in 2016 were featured in the Twentieth Century movie of the same name.
Her talk “The Fourth ‘Hidden Figure’: Getting to NASA,” for a general audience, will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 25, at the Nebraska Union Auditorium.
Both lectures are free and open to the public.
Darden, a native of Monroe, North Carolina, earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics education from Hampton Institute (now University) in Hampton, Virginia; a Master of Science in applied mathematics from Virginia State College (now University); and a D.Sc. Degree in mechanical engineering from George Washington University in Washington, DC. Darden also holds a Certificate of Advanced Study in Management from Simmons College Graduate School of Management in Boston, MA.
Nearly 400 mathematics students and educators are attending NCUWM, and 127 students will be presenting their research. The selected conference participants have an opportunity to learn about life in graduate school from the perspective of current women graduate students representing math departments from across the country. Panel discussions will be held featuring representatives from government and private companies who will talk about their careers and how conference participants can put their advanced math skills to use in a variety of careers.
The conference is sponsored by the Department of Mathematics and the Center for Science, Mathematics and Computer Education; the National Science Foundation; and the National Security Agency.