For years, Maia Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, has been creating miniature LEGO figurines to honor and promote such scientists and engineers as MIT Institute Professor Emerita Mildred Dresselhaus, Vice President for Research Maria T. Zuber, and Department of Chemical Engineering head Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Chair Professor in Engineering. The figures are Weinstock’s playful way of boosting the visibility of scientists, in particular the work of female scientists. 
 
 Now, a set of LEGOs Weinstock created celebrating the history of women at NASA is about to blast off. On Tuesday, LEGO announced that Weinstock’s project, which spotlights five women who made historic contributions to the U.S. space program, has been selected to become an official LEGO set. 
 
 “What a wonderful way to celebrate the scientific achievements of these five pioneering women,�? says Zuber, the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and the first woman to lead a NASA planetary mission. “And I’m thrilled with the message that these LEGOs will send to girls — that they, too, can pursue their passions in science, technology, engineering, and math, and help make a better world.�? 
 
 Last summer Weinstock submitted her concept, dubbed the Women of NASA, to LEGO Ideas, a platform that allows people around the world to propose new ideas for LEGO concepts. After a public voting period, during which Weinstock’s set received 10,000 votes in 15 days, her project underwent an official LEGO review. 
 
 Weinstock was inspired to create the set by her love of space and NASA, and her desire to showcase the contributions that women have made over the years to the field of space exploration. Above all, she hopes the set will help encourage more young girls to pursue STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). 
 
 “I hope that ‘Women of NASA’ will be one little extra brick in the wall of trying to improve how women are perceived and shown in books, toys, and family programming,�? Weinstock explains. “Anything I can do to help make sure girls understand that they can and should be interested in the sciences, engineering, and math, that is my goal. At the end of the day, that’s why I am doing this.�? 
 
 The set depicts five trailblazers in NASA’s history: Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led the development of software for the Apollo missions while at MIT; Mae Jemison, who became the first African-American woman in space in 1992; Katherine Johnson, known for calculating and verifying trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo programs; Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space in 1983; and astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, one of the first female executives at NASA, who was instrumental in the planning of the Hubble Space Telescope. 
 
 Weinstock explains that she wanted the set to feature “a very diverse group of women in terms of what they did, in terms of their fields at NASA, in terms of their cultural backgrounds, and also in terms of their age. Some are shown as younger, but I made sure I had one shown as older. Also, most of the women in the set are known for their work in the space flight program at NASA, but I wanted to give a shout out to the astronomy program as well.�? 
 
 Weinstock began creating LEGO figures back in 2009, when she constructed a LEGO likeness for her friend Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist known for her imaging work on the Voyager and Cassini missions. After sharing an image of Porco’s LEGO figurine on Twitter, Weinstock received an outpouring of positive feedback and was inspired to create more figures in an effort to help promote the work of living scientists. 
 
 Since she built her first figurine, Weinstock has created LEGOs for a number of celebrated scientists and engineers, including primatologist Jane Goodall, oceanographer Sylvia Earle, physicist Stephen Hawking, and a number of MIT faculty members such as Ernest Moniz, professor of physics and special advisor to the president, and Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. 
 
 “Being immortalized in LEGO is probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to me,�? Bhatia says. “I hope it makes lots of little tinkerers dream about being engineers at MIT someday.�? 
 
 Weinstock explains that she chose LEGOs as her medium as she feels “there is a childlike wonder to playing with a toy that you can make in people’s likeness.�? 
 
 “One major goal for me is to get the public to recognize the history of women in the STEM fields. I’m hopeful that with this set more people will come to know these women,�? Weinstock says. “Part of it is knowing these specific five women, but also part of it is setting an example. It’s really important to set an example for girls, as well as for boys, to normalize and make plain that women are expected to be in these fields and that it’s not strange or unusual.�? ||||| ‘Hidden Figures’ puts talent to the test, and 3 actresses ace it 
 
 “Math class is tough!” – Famously controversial comment uttered by Teen Talk Barbie, 1992. 
 
 Raise a glass of holiday cheer to “Hidden Figures,” the “Rocky” of math movies. 
 
 You might just find yourself applauding during certain moments of dramatic triumph in Theodore Melfi’s unabashedly sentimental and wonderfully inspirational film, and yes, some of those moments feature people working out high-level math problems. 
 
 Not just any people, but some key figures — and yes, some hidden figures — in NASA’s heroic efforts to win the space race against the Russians in the 1960s. 
 
 Based on the non-fiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly, “Hidden Figures” shines a deserving spotlight on three black female mathematicians working for NASA in the Computers Division at the Langley Research Center. 
 
 • Octavia Spencer is Dorothy Vaughan, who does the work of a group supervisor but is thwarted in her efforts to get the title, the pay and the recognition of a supervisor. Her smug and condescending boss (Kirsten Dunst) clearly believes an African-American woman shouldn’t be elevated to equal status. 
 
 • Janelle Monae is Mary Jackson, an aerospace engineer who literally has to take her case to court so she’ll be allowed to take night classes to pursue an advanced degree. Spencer and Monae deliver beautiful, strong, immensely effective, nomination-worthy supporting performances. 
 
 • And Taraji P. Henson’s Katherine Johnson is at the front and center of the story, as the lone African-American woman working in in the vital Space Task Group, the NASA engineers charged with mapping out American’s manned spaceflight programs. 
 
 Playing a character about as far away from “Empire’s” Cookie as the acting spectrum will allow, Henson delivers the performance of a lifetime. She disappears into the persona of the bespectacled, nerdy, determined, confident, pioneering Katherine, who has to fight to have her ideas heard, has to fight to even get a seat in the room where all the key decisions are made — and even has to fight for the right not to have to run halfway across Langley every time she has to go to the bathroom because the Ladies’ Room in her building is for “Whites Only.” 
 
 Co-writer and director Melfi (who directed the equally sentimental and quite terrific Bill Murray vehicle “St. Vincent” a couple of years ago) announces the borderline corny tone of “Hidden Figures” from the get-go, with Mary, Dorothy and Katherine stranded after their car breaks down. 
 
 A squad car with lights flashing pulls up, and a white state trooper approaches the ladies and asks for identification. When Katherine shows him her NASA badge, the officer exclaims, “NASA! I had no idea …” 
 
 “There are quite a few women working in the space program,” says Dorothy. 
 
 After the car is fixed — Dorothy susses out the problem —- the trooper gives the ladies an escort, and Mary quips, “Three Negro women are chasing a white police officer down the highway in 1961. That is a God-ordained miracle.” 
 
 We get a number of scenes with a similar vibe in “Hidden Figures,” with the women dealing with longstanding stereotypes and subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) racism. Most of the white characters in the film are basically good people whocome to see the light about their prejudices. 
 
 Kevin Costner has the Kevin Costner role as Al Harrison (a composite character), the crusty head of the Space Task Group who goes about his business like Vince Lombardi — barking at his team, telling them they’re losing to the blasted Russians and they better GET WITH IT. Glen Powell is John Glenn, who doesn’t care about gender or color; he just wants the smartest people available to calculate his path, because HE’S the one going up in that capsule. 
 
 Mahershala Ali is his usual welcome presence as Jim Johnson, the military man courting Katherine (and her children). Katherine’s so focused on her career she almost has to be reminded she’s falling in love. 
 
 But mostly and most memorably, “Hidden Figures” is about Katherine, Dorothy and Mary, three remarkable and groundbreaking American heroes. 
 
 Henson, Spencer and Monae are all so good. Each has her individual moments, and they’re wonderful together, even when we get clichéd scenes such as the obligatory “everybody dances in the living room” routine. 
 
 Katherine’s glasses don’t hide the unwavering look of determination in her eyes. Dorothy knows exactly how and when to play her trump cards to get what is rightfully hers. Mary’s speech to a Virginia judge in which she appeals to his ego so he’ll rule in favor of her breaking the color barrier in night school is a pure applause-inducing moment. 
 
 Junior high and high school classes across the country should take field trips to see this movie. 
 
 ★★★1⁄2 
 
 20th Century Fox presents a film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder, based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly. Rated PG (for thematic elements and some language). Running time: 127 minutes. Opens Sunday at Kerasotes Showplace Icon.
– Mathematician Katherine Johnson was one of the women of NASA depicted in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, and now she's about to get her own Lego figure. Per MIT News, Johnson and four other women involved with the space agency over the years—Margaret Hamilton (computer scientist), Mae Jemison (first African-American woman in space in 1992), Nancy Grace Roman (pioneering NASA female exec and astronomer), and Sally Ride (the first US woman in space in 1983)—are set to be part of Maia Weinstock's "Women of NASA" Lego prototype, which was chosen from the Lego ideas submission website to be made into an actual set. Concepts for potential sets can be posted on the site, and after the public votes (Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, got 10,000 votes for her idea), Lego then reviews eligible projects. Weinstock says she not only wanted to give a nod to the history of women in STEM, but also to "set an example" for both girls and boys that it isn't "strange or unusual" for there to be females working as astronauts, computer programmers, or any other science or technology expert. Lego says more details on Weinstock's set, including how much it will cost and its release date, should be out later this year or in early 2018. (Cambridge is offering a Lego professorship.)