
- #KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA MATH MOVIE#
- #KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA MATH VERIFICATION#
- #KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA MATH SOFTWARE#
By 18, she’d finished college, where she excelled as a math major and was sometimes the only student in the hardest courses offered.

Johnson started high school by the time she was 10. She counted everything: the steps between her house and the road, the number of dishes she’d washed-anything that could be quantified. Katherine Johnson died at the age of 101 in Hampton, Virginia.As a girl growing up in rural West Virginia, Katherine Johnson loved to count. In 2021, Northrup Grumman named one its NG-15 Cygnus robotic spacecraft, which supply the International Space Station, the S.S.
#KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA MATH SOFTWARE#
The facility ensures that all of NASA’s critical safety mission software is safe.
#KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA MATH VERIFICATION#
On December 11, a NASA software facility in Fairmont was renamed the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility. On August 25, 2018, West Virginia State University unveiled a statue of Johnson on campus and dedicated the Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson Scholarship to aid young people studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

#KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA MATH MOVIE#
On Christmas Day, 2016, 20th Century Fox released the movie Hidden Figures, based on the book and with actress Taraji Henson in the role of Johnson. The book follows the interwoven accounts of Johnson and three other Black women - including Dorothy Vaughan, who grew up in Morgantown - who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes over three decades. In September 2016, Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race was released. Johnson Computational Research Facility at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 2015, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama for her accomplishments in the field of mathematics and science. A pioneer for African-American women in science, math, and technical fields, she continues to be a vigorous advocate for young girls and education. She has authored or co-authored 26 articles in her field. Johnson has received many awards, including honorary doctoral degrees. Johnson’s successful calculations were central to many prominent American space flights during her tenure at NASA.

In 1969, she calculated the Apollo 11 trajectory to the Moon. In 1962, for John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth, she verified calculations made for the first time by electronic computers. Her work was crucial in calculating the 1961 trajectory for Alan Shepard’s historic suborbital flight. From 1958 to 1986, when she retired from NASA, Johnson was an aerospace technologist. Following her first husband’s death from a brain tumor in 1956, she married Lt. She began working with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the agency that preceded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA), in 1953, as a “computer” doing complex analysis and calculations. After graduation, she worked as a teacher of mathematics until she began her work for the space program in the 1950s.ĭespite the obstacle of being an African-American woman in a male-dominated field, she persevered and thrived. In 1939, she married James Francis Goble together, they had three daughters – Constance, Joylette, and Katherine. She began college at West Virginia State the next year and graduated in 1937, at age 18, with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and French. Johnson left home to attend an African-American high school associated with West Virginia State College (now University), and completed her secondary school course work at the age of 13. The local segregated schools offered schooling only to eighth grade for Black children. Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (Aug– February 24, 2020), a NASA mathematician, was born in White Sulphur Springs.
