Katherine Johnson was one of the most talented mathematicians in American space travel. For a long time she fought for recognition in the male-dominated industry as a black woman and triple mother. Now she died at 101.
The woman who sent men to the moon: this is how Katherine Johnson will be remembered for posterity. The mathematician died today at the age of 101, as the US space agency Nasa announced in a tweet. Johnson was considered a mathematical genius and worked for NASA’s first space missions in the 1960s. It played a key role in sending the first people to the moon.
It was her job to calculate rocket trajectories, Johnson told the newspaper “The Virginian-Pilot” in 2012. “You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I’ll tell you where and when and how to launch the rocket.” In 1961, she calculated the trajectory for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space. With NASA’s Mercury program, the United States sent people into orbit for the first time. The mathematician Johnson also calculated the orbit for NASA’s “Apollo 11” space mission, enabling the first moon landing in 1969. She also participated in the United States’ first space shuttle program.
Overall, Johnson has had an impressive 33 year career with the United States Space Agency. Johnson also wrote fundamental treatises on space travel. The Oscar-winning film “Hidden Figures – Unrecognized Heroines” tells her role as a black woman in a male-dominated industry and the then deeply racist society.
Until 1958, Johnson and other black women worked in a separate computer unit at what was then Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, because of the segregation they practiced at the time. At the age of 97, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian award.
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