Evelyn Granville

Updated: 12/01/2019 by Computer Hope
Evelyn Boyd Granville

Name: Evelyn Boyd Granville

Born: May 1, 1924, in Washington, D.C., USA

Computer-related contributions

  • One of the first African-American women to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics.
  • Former computer programmer at IBM.
  • Worked for the U.S. Space Technology Laboratories.
  • Subject of the academy award-nominated film Hidden Figures (2016), based on a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly. The fictional story was based on true stories of black female mathematicians (then known as "human computers") who played a pivotal role at NASA during the space race of the 1960s.

Honors and awards

  • Inducted into Portrait Collection of African-Americans in Science (1999).
  • Awarded an honorary doctorate by Smith College (1989).
  • Valedictorian at Dunbar High School, an academically competitive (and at the time, segretated) school for black students in Washington, D.C. (1941).