As she ran her eyes over the flight-test calculation sheets the engineer had given her, Katherine Goble could see there was something wrong with them. The engineer had made an error with a square root (平方根). And it was going to be tricky to tell him so. It was her first day on this assignment, when she and another girl had been picked out of the computing pool at the Langley aeronautical laboratory, to help the all-male flight research unit.
But there were other, more significant snags (障碍) than simply being new—he was a man and she was a woman. In 1953 women did not question men. They stayed in their place, in this case usually the computing pool, tapping away on their desktop calculators or filling sheets with figures, she as neatly turned out as all the rest. Men were the grand designers, the engineers; the women were “computers in skirts”, who were handed a set of equations (方程式) and exhaustively, diligently checked them. Men were not interested in things as small as that.
Nonetheless, this engineer's calculation was wrong. If she did not ask the question, an aircraft might not fly, or might fly and crash.
So 
very carefully, she asked it. Was it possible that he could have made a mistake? He did not admit it but, by turning the colour of a cough drop, he ceded (屈服) the point. She asked more such questions, and they got her noticed. As the weeks passed, the men “forgot” to return her to the pool. Her incessant “why?” and “how?” made their work sharper. It also challenged them. Why were their calculations of aerodynamic forces so often out? Because they were maths graduates who had forgotten their geometry, whereas she had not; her high-school brilliance at maths had led to special classes on analytic geometry in which she, at 13, had been the only pupil.
Why was she not allowed to get her name on a flight-trajectory report when she had done most of the work? Because women didn't. That was no answer, so she got her name on the report, the first woman to be so credited. Why was she not allowed into the engineers' lectures on orbital mechanics and rocket propulsion? Because “the girls don't go”. Why? Did she not read Aviation Week, like them? She soon became the first woman there.
As NASA's focus turned from supersonic flight to flights in space, she was therefore deeply involved, though still behind the scenes. She ensured that Alan Shepards mercury capsule splashed down where it could be found quickly in 1961, and that John Glenn in 1962 could return safely from his first orbits of the earth. Indeed, until she had checked the figures by hand against those of the newfangled electronic computer, he refused to go.
Later she calculated the timings for the first moon landing (with the astronauts' return), and worked on the space shuttle. But in the galaxy of space-programme heroes, despite her 33 years in the flight research unit, for a long time she featured nowhere.
It did not trouble her. First, she also had other things to do: Raise her three daughters, cook, sew their clothes, care for her sick first husband. Second, she knew in her own mind how good she was—as good as anybody. She could hardly be unaware of it, when she had graduated from high school at 14 and college at 18, expert at all the maths anyone knew how to teach her.
But when their story emerged in the 21st century, most notably in a book and a film called “hidden figure”, she had a NASA building named after her and a shower of honorary doctorates.
Do your best, she always said Love what you do. Be constantly curious. And learn that it is not dumb to ask a question; it is dumb not to ask it. Not least, because it might lead to the small but significant victory of making a self-proclaimed (自称的) superior realise he can make a mistake.
