Margot Lee Shetterly

History happens as soon as I pick up my coffee cup - it happened 30 seconds ago. It's history.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Surely she had never traveled a greater emotional distance”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Expertise in a subfield was the key to a successful career as an engineer, and expertise was becoming a necessity for the…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“From the fissure of their ever-present double consciousness sprang the idea of the double victory, articulated by James Thompson in his letter…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“And while the black women are the most hidden of the mathematicians who worked at the NACA, the National Advisory Committee for…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Building an airplane was nothing compared to shepherding research through Langley's grueling review process. "Present your case, build, sell it,= so they…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

That's what 'Star Trek' was: We don't know how to make an ideal society, but we're going to portray that, and then…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“The jobs, the housing, the relationships, the routines --- so many aspects of life that had been cut out of the whole…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

As much as I think it is necessary and desirable for white people to have an expanded view of the black American…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

You don't get the good without the bad, but you really do have to see it all in order to make progress.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Of course, while Katherine took the accolades in stride, she never took the work for granted. Not a morning dawned that she…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

It has been very rare to see a black woman as a protagonist. And also as three-dimensional people - mathematicians, mothers, wives,…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“As fantastical as America’s space ambitions might have seemed, sending a man into space was starting to feel like a straightforward task…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

A lot of times, we talk about black people as if being black is all they are. They get up, go to…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I'm not a scientist or a mathematician.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“In 1951, Air Scoop published a long list of organizations that the government had labeled totalitarian, Communist, or subversive, the clear message…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but there's as much drama and interest and lessons to be…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

A lot of times, when you have a story of minorities in America, it's always this super, oppositional thing. It's segregation, it's…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Because of the overwhelmingly white public face of the space program, the black engineers, scientists, and mathematicians who were deeply involved with…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I guess it's inevitable that I would become somebody who would write about scientists.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Not even Pearl Young, the NACA’s first female engineer and the founder of the agency’s rigorous editorial review process, left behind research…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

My dad joined Langley in 1964 as a co-op student and retired in 2004 an internationally respected climate scientist.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

You can't change history. These things happened the way they did. What you can change is how you look at it and…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

Five of my father's seven siblings made their bones as engineers or technologists, and some of his best buddies - David Woods,…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

My dad worked at NASA his whole career; he's a research scientist.

— Margot Lee Shetterly