Today’s #TuesdayTrailblazer is Katherine Johnson, the trailblazing mathematician who allowed mankind to successfully enter space and reach the moon.? ? Born in 1918, Katherine solved complex equations while most children were still learning multiplication tables. She graduated from high school at 14 and attended West Virginia State University—an HBCU---where she studied mathematics and French. Her early career was spent as a math teacher in Virginia before she was selected as one of the first three Black graduate students at West Virginia University in 1939. ? In 1953, Katherine changed career paths and started working at the National Advisory Committee Aeronautics West Area Computing Unit where she manually solved complex equations. The program was still segregated, and she was one of the few Black women to work for NASA. Katherine’s early calculations set the groundwork for the U.S. space program. NACA became part of NASA in 1958, ending workplace segregation. ? Katherine joined NASA’s Space Task Group and coauthored a paper calculating how to put a spacecraft in orbit. The paper was the first time a woman---much less a Black woman---received credit for her calculations in a NASA report.? ? Not content to merely prove that humans could fly in space, Katherine ensured that they did. In 1961, her calculations charted the path for Freedom 7, the first crewed American spacecraft. In 1962, John Glenn refused to fly in space until Katherine checked the computer’s flight plan. When she verified the numbers, Glen became the first American to orbit Earth. In 1969, Katherine helped calculate the path for Apollo 11, sending mankind to the Moon for the first time. ? Katherine retired from NASA in 1986 after more than three decades of work on the space program. Her crucial contributions remained relatively unknown to the public until she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2015. The following year, NASA named the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility in her honor. Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race publicized Katherine’s contribution, as did the 2016 film Hidden Figures. Kathrine passed away in 2020, leaving a legacy that helped mankind reach the stars.
Chanel Duncan
1 周
Paved the waved????!
Garvey McIntosh
2 周
Inspiring!
Medical Officer Instructor at Royal Air Force (RAF)
2 周Hidden figures.Utterly superb and inspiring film. Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan were simply legendary, trailblazers, hardworking women that broke down barriers. May their legacy continue to shine ??