Katherine Johnson

American mathematician whose hand calculations of spacecraft trajectories were trusted by NASA astronauts for missions to orbit and the Moon.

الإنجازات

Calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard's first American spaceflight in 1961

Manually verified electronic computer calculations for John Glenn's 1962 orbital flight at his personal request

Contributed trajectory calculations for the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing mission

Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2015) and Congressional Gold Medal (2019)

Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and showed extraordinary mathematical talent from childhood, entering college at age fifteen. She graduated with highest honors from West Virginia State College, and throughout her career faced the double barrier of race and gender in a field dominated by white men.

In 1953 Johnson joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor to NASA, working among a group of women known as «human computers». Her skill in analytic geometry was so trusted that engineers specifically requested her calculations. In 1961 she calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard's flight, the first American in space, and in 1962 astronaut John Glenn personally asked that Johnson manually verify the electronic computer's calculations before he trusted his orbital flight around Earth.

Scientific Legacy

Johnson went on to contribute to the trajectory calculations for the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and her story became globally known through the book and film «Hidden Figures» (2016). She died in 2020 at age 101, leaving a legacy in mathematics and space science that has inspired generations of women and minorities to enter STEM fields.