She taught at black state schools before becoming one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools in 1939. She was born Katherine Coleman on 26 August 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, near the Virginia border. NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle is holding the microphone. Janelle Monae, Taraji P Henson and Octavia Spencer introduce Katherine Johnson, the inspiration for Hidden Figures, as they present the award for best documentary feature at the Oscars. But in 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Ms Johnson - then 97 - the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour. She and her co-workers had been relatively unsung heroes of America’s Space Race. She also worked on the Space Shuttle programme before retiring in 1986. Her calculations helped the lunar lander rendezvous with the orbiting command service module. Ms Johnson considered her work on the Apollo programme to be her greatest contribution to space exploration.
“We get to mourn her and also commemorate the work that she did that she’s most known for at the same time,” Shetterly said. Shetterly noted that Ms Johnson died during Black History Month and a few days after the anniversary of Glenn’s orbits of the Earth on 20 February 1962, for which she played an important role. “She gave us a new way to look at black history, women’s history and American history.” “The wonderful gift that Katherine Johnson gave us is that her story shined a light on the stories of so many other people,” Shetterly said. I'm as good as anybody, but no better Katherine Johnson “Get the girl to check the numbers,” a computer-sceptical Glenn had insisted in the days before the launch. The next year, she manually verified the calculations of a nascent NASA computer, an IBM 7090, which plotted John Glenn’s orbits around the planet. In 1961, Ms Johnson did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space. Wally Funk: a story of sexism in the race for space.10 amazing women in science history you really should know about.Ada Lovelace: a mathematician, a computer scientist and a visionary.Ladies who launch: the women behind the Apollo Program.Read more about women in science history:
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“You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it.”
“Our office computed all the (rocket) trajectories,” she told the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012. But her work at NASA's Langley Research Centre eventually shifted to Project Mercury, the nation’s first human space programme. She focused on planes and other research at first. Katherine Johnson, in 1955 © NASA/Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
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