Katherine Johnson, the woman who hand-calculated the trajectory for America’s first trip to space, died Monday, according to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. Johnson was 101 years old. According to a biography on NASA’s website, Johnson was one of three African-American students to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate schools. At 13, Johnson attended the high school on the campus of West Virginia State College and enrolled there at 18. There, she found a mentor in math professor W.W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to earn a PhD in mathematics. Johnson graduated in 1937 and taught at a black public school in Virginia until she enrolled in the graduate math program at West Virginia University. Although she eventually left school to have children, Johnson and her family eventually moved to Virginia, where she began work in 1953 at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory.In 1957, Johnson provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, and, joined the team at NACA (which later became NASA) that began to explore space travel. Johnson also assisted with trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first spaceflight. In 1960, she became the first woman in the Flight Research Division to receive credit as an author of a research report for her work detailing the mathematics of an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. Johnson was called upon in 1962 to assist with John Glenn’s orbital mission, using a desktop mechanical calculating machine to control the trajectory of the capsule in the groundbreaking Friendship 7 mission. Johnson was part of NASA’s “Computer Pool,” a group of mathematicians whose data powered NASA’s first successful space missions. The group’s success largely hinged on the accomplishments of its black women members.Her work went largely unrecognized until the release of 2016’s “Hidden Figures,” a film that portrayed the accomplishments of Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson while the space agency was still largely segregated.By 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.In 2015, at age 97, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Related video: African-American pioneers in NASA’s space programCNN contributed to this report.
Katherine Johnson, the woman who hand-calculated the trajectory for America’s first trip to space, died Monday, according to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Johnson was 101 years old.
According to a biography on NASA’s website, Johnson was one of three African-American students to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate schools.
At 13, Johnson attended the high school on the campus of West Virginia State College and enrolled there at 18.
There, she found a mentor in math professor W.W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to earn a PhD in mathematics.
Johnson graduated in 1937 and taught at a black public school in Virginia until she enrolled in the graduate math program at West Virginia University.
Although she eventually left school to have children, Johnson and her family eventually moved to Virginia, where she began work in 1953 at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory.
In 1957, Johnson provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, and, joined the team at NACA (which later became NASA) that began to explore space travel.
Johnson also assisted with trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first spaceflight.
In 1960, she became the first woman in the Flight Research Division to receive credit as an author of a research report for her work detailing the mathematics of an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified.
Johnson was called upon in 1962 to assist with John Glenn’s orbital mission, using a desktop mechanical calculating machine to control the trajectory of the capsule in the groundbreaking Friendship 7 mission.
Johnson was part of NASA’s “Computer Pool,” a group of mathematicians whose data powered NASA’s first successful space missions. The group’s success largely hinged on the accomplishments of its black women members.
Her work went largely unrecognized until the release of 2016’s “Hidden Figures,” a film that portrayed the accomplishments of Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson while the space agency was still largely segregated.
By 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.
In 2015, at age 97, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Related video: African-American pioneers in NASA’s space program
CNN contributed to this report.
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