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Bonnie Kathaleen Land (21 November 1918 - 7 October 2012) was a computer and mathematician at NASA's Langley facility. The 2016 movie Hidden Figures, which brought awareness to this early success within the NASA space program, was written by Land's former Sunday school student, and Land served as one of the first interviewees during research for the novel. Land was called the "inspiration behind, catalyst for, and gateway to" the creation of Hidden Figures.

She was married to Stanley Land and had three daughters. She died on 7 October 2012.

Biography

Bonnie Kathaleen Pleasants was born on 21 November 1918 in Bridgewater, Virginia. She married Stanley Land on 1 December 1941 in Newport News, Virginia, and they had three daughters.

She worked as a human computer and mathematician at NASA's Langley Research Center facility. When Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of Hidden Figures, was a child, Land taught her in Sunday school following Land's retirement from NASA. Land was one of the first people Shetterly interviewed when she began researching for the Hidden Figures book, and Land provided several of the names of the human computers who were featured in the book and film. She is described as "the inspiration behind, catalyst for, and gateway to Hidden Figures".

Land died on 7 October 2012 in Hampton, Virginia.

See also

• Katherine Johnson
• Dorothy Vaughan
• Mary Jackson

References

1. ^ "Bonnie Land Obituary". Daily Press Obituaries. Archived from the original on 11 September 2023. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
2. ^ "Virginia, Marriage Certificates, 1936-1988 - Virginia, Marriage Records, 1700-1850". FamilySearch.org. 10 January 2019. Retrieved 11 September 2023.
3. ^ "Bonnie K Land - United States Social Security Death Index". FamilySearch.org. 21 January 2021. Retrieved 11 September 2023.
4. "Human Computers". NasaCRgis. 23 April 2019. Archived from the original on 4 November 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
5. Fairfax, Colita Nichols (August 2005). Hampton, Virginia. Black America Series. Arcadia Publishing. p. 121. ISBN 0-7385-1810-7.
6. ^ Head, Deirdre R. J. (August 2020). Dorothy Vaughan: NASA's Leading Human Computer. Capstone Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-4966-8819-4.
7. ^ "Hidden no more: The African-American women of NASA's history". Silicon Republic. 24 February 2017. Archived from the original on 31 March 2023. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
8. ^ Shetterly, Margot Lee (7 February 2017). "Hidden figures: the history of Nasa's black female scientists". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Archived from the original on 9 October 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
9. Shetterly, Margot Lee (September 2016). "Prologue". Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-236359-6.

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