She hand-computed the trajectory of the first manned launch and continued to be important to the astronauts. And they said, 'Well, the girls don't usually go.' and I said, 'Well, is there a law?' They said, 'No.' So then my boss said, 'Let her go.' "Īnd she never stopped going, using her extraordinary computing skills to move up the NASA chain. As Johnson told public television station WHRO in 2011, none of it held her back: "I just happened to be working with guys and when they had briefings, I asked permission to go. The women battled both racism and sexism. She was one of a handful of African American women hired to do computing in the guidance and navigation department at Langley's Research Center in Virginia. "Everybody there was doing research," she recalled in later years, "You had a mission and you worked on it." She initially became a teacher but, in 1953, took a job at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics - the agency that would become NASA. She graduated from high school at 14 and finished college with degrees in math and French from historically black West Virginia State College. As a young girl, she was fascinated by numbers and it was clear early on she was gifted. Johnson was born in West Virginia in 1918. "Her story and her grace continue to inspire the world." "The NASA family will never forget Katherine Johnson's courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her," Bridenstine wrote on Twitter. Her death was announced by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. She calculated the flight path for America's first crewed space mission and moon landing, and she was among the women profiled in the book and movie Hidden Figures. I’m as good as anybody, but no better.Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who was one of NASA's human "computers" and an unsung hero of the space agency's early days, died Monday. “My dad taught us ‘you are as good as anybody in this town, but you’re no better,'” Johnson told NASA in 2008. Looking back, she said she had little time to worry about being treated unequally. Johnson spent her later years encouraging students to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In 1953, she started working at the all-Black West Area Computing unit at what was then called Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton. She left after the first session to start a family with her first husband, James Goble, and returned to teaching when her three daughters grew older. Johnson taught at Black public schools before becoming one of three Black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools in 1939. The small town had no schools for Blacks beyond the eighth grade, she told The Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1997.Įach September, her father drove Johnson and her siblings to Institute, West Virginia, for high school and college on the campus of the historically Black West Virginia State College. Johnson was born Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, near the Virginia border. Jackson and Vaughan had died in 20 respectively. In 2017, Johnson was brought on stage at the Academy Awards ceremony to thunderous applause. The film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and grossed more than $200 million worldwide. Johnson was portrayed in the film by actress Taraji P. The “Hidden Figures” book and film followed, telling the stories of Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, among others. But in 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson - then 97 - the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Johnson and her co-workers had been relatively unsung heroes of America’s Space Race. She also worked on the Space Shuttle program before retiring in 1986. Her calculations helped the lunar lander rendezvous with the orbiting command service module. Johnson considered her work on the Apollo moon missions to be her greatest contribution to space exploration. “We get to mourn her and also commemorate the work that she did that she’s most known for at the same time,” Shetterly said. 20, 1962, for which she played an important role. Shetterly noted that Johnson died during Black History Month and a few days after the anniversary of Glenn’s orbits of the earth on Feb. “She gave us a new way to look at Black history, women’s history and American history.” “The wonderful gift that Katherine Johnson gave us is that her story shined a light on the stories of so many other people,” Shetterly said. Shetterly told The Associated Press on Monday that Johnson was “exceptional in every way.” “It took a day and a half of watching the tiny digits pile up: eye-numbing, disorienting work,” Shetterly wrote.
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