“I was looking at the television I said, ‘Boy, I hope he’s got that right.’ And I was sitting there hoping I’m right too,” she laughed.Īs NASA concluded when President Obama awarded Johnson, now 97, the Presidential Medal of Freedom: “Not bad, for a little girl from West Virginia, who coincidentally (or maybe not) was born on August 26: Women’s Equality Day. If he missed it by a degree, he doesn’t get into orbit.” While the world watched Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon on July 20, 1969, Johnson said, “we were really concerned when they were leaving the moon, going back. A version of this file more suitable for general use can be. Johnson said her proudest achievement was figuring the launch window for Apollo 11. Any modified versions or replacements of this image should be uploaded with a different file name. President Obama awards Katherine Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He requested that Johnson check the math. Her reputation was such that when John Glenn was preparing for his first orbital flight in 1962, he didn’t trust the calculations made by NASA’s new electronic computers. Johnson’s math mapped the flight of Alan Shepard, who became the first American in space in 1961. But Johnson questioned the policy, and got a spot at the table. She was told women didn’t attend high-level meetings with engineers and flight researchers. Katherine Johnson with an adding machine and a ‘celestial training device’ at her desk at Nasa’s Langley research centre in 1962. Katherine Johnson, 97, was instrumental in every major NASA space program from Mercury to the space shuttle. The all-male space flight research group requested her for their team. But her mathematical skills and strategic thinking quickly made her indispensable. There, Johnson was expected to simply plug numbers into other engineers’ formulas all day. Katherine Johnson worked for NASA as a mathematician, where she performed calculations for space flights, including the Mercury, Apollo, and Space Shuttle. She finished college at age 18.Īfter a stint as a schoolteacher, she got a job as a “computer” in 1953 at what would become NASA. When she had taken every advanced mathematics course at West Virginia State College, professors created new courses for her. At the age of 10, she started secondary school. Johnson always seemed to outgrow her classes. Katherine Johnson's story was made famous in the bestselling book and Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures.Johnson’s calculations were instrumental in every major space flight program, from Mercury to Apollo to the space shuttle. She worked on many of NASA's biggest projects including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon. In this image, she celebrates her 98th birthday, where a historical marker and bench were unveiled to mark the occasion. Still, she lived her life with her father's words in mind: "You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you." In the early 1950s, Katherine was thrilled to join the organization that would become NASA. As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, Katherine faced daily challenges. But ability and opportunity did not always go hand in hand. In school she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with the support of a professor who saw great promise in her. Summary: "As a young girl, Katherine Johnson showed an exceptional aptitude for math.
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