![]() ![]() 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. 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. All rights reserved.NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, pictured at the 2017 Academy Awards, was one of the women profiled in the book and film Hidden Figures. ™ & © 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. “A barrier breaker and inspiration for women of color everywhere, Katherine’s legendary work with NASA will forever leave a mark on our history,” she tweeted. Kamala Harris, who introduced a bill to honor Johnson and the “hidden figures” in 2019, mourned the passing of the “icon and brilliant mathematician.” “At NASA we will never forget her courage and leadership and the milestones we could not have reached without her.” Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space,” he said in a statement. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine called Johnson an “American hero.” “We always worked as a team,” she said in a 2010 interview. ![]() Praise for their work was certainly overdue, but Johnson resisted taking full credit for the Computer Pool’s accomplishments. ![]() Around the office in the 1960s, she and her colleagues were called as “computers in skirts” and worked in a segregated facility. In 2015, President Barack Obama honored Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her pivotal work in American space travel.Ī Barbie doll in the first round of Mattel’s “Inspiring Women” series was based on Johnson.īut before all of that, Johnson’s work went largely unrecognized. Vaughan and Jackson received theirs posthumously. And in November, the three women plus engineer Christine Darden received Congressional Gold Medals for their contributions to space travel. A street in front of NASA headquarters in Washington was renamed “Hidden Figures Way” for the three women in July. NASA renamed a facility for Johnson in February 2019. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae.) (In the movie, they were portrayed by, respectively, Taraji P. His mission - and Johnson’s role in it - helped nudge the US ahead in the space race.īy the time Johnson retired from NASA in 1986, she’d mapped the moon’s surface ahead of the 1969 landing and helped astronauts aboard the Apollo 13 safely land back on Earth.Īfter the 2016 publication of the book “Hidden Figures,” officials lobbed heaps of praise on Johnson and two other black women mathematicians in the agency’s Computer Pool, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. She gave the OK, and Glenn’s flight was a success. “If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go,” Johnson remembered Glenn saying. He was skeptical of the computers that calculated his spacecraft’s trajectory, so he told engineers to “get the girl” and compare Johnson’s handwritten calculations to the computer’s. John Glenn requested her help before his orbit around Earth in 1962. She co-authored a paper on the safety of orbital landings in 1960 - the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division received credit for a report.ĭespite often being the only woman in briefings, she quickly gained notice for her accuracy. She was tasked with performing trajectory analysis for Alan Shepherd’s 1961 mission, the first American human spaceflight. VIDEO: Katherine Johnson, famed NASA mathematician, dies at 101 She started in 1953 in the facility’s segregated wing for women before she was quickly transferred to the Flight Research Division, where she remained for several years.īut midway through the ’50s, the space race between the US and the Soviet Union began to intensify. She was one of several black researchers with college degrees hired for the agency’s aeronautical lab through the initiative. Following an executive order that prohibited racial discrimination in the defense industry, Johnson was hired at NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA’s predecessor. ![]()
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