What did katherine johnson do
- •
Katherine Johnson Biography
Born: Aug. 26, 1918
Died: Feb. 24, 2020
Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV
Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937
Hired by NACA: June 1953
Retired from NASA: 1986
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson
Biography by Margot Lee Shetterly
Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life’s most notable moments, but it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At 18, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD i
- •
Katherine Johnson
American NASA mathematician (1918–2020)
For other people with similar names, see Katharine Johnson.
Creola Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.[1][2] During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".[3]
Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the ApolloLunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon.[4] Her calculat
- •
Katherine Johnson
- Birthdate
- 1918/08/26
- Birthplace
- White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, USA
- Death date
- 2020/02/24
- Awards
- Presidential Medal of Freedom, IEEE President's Award)
Biography
In 2015, President Barack Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to ninety-seven-year-old, Katherine Johnson for refusing “to be limited by society’s expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach.” While working as a technologist for the spacecraft controls branch of NASA in 1961, she calculated the path for astronaut Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 for America’s first human spaceflight. She would go on to later perform calculations for astronaut John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth, the first Moon landing, and the aborted Apollo 13 mission. She was also later involved in the early years of the space shuttle, and the Earth Resources satellite.
Early Life
Katherine Johnson was born Creola Katherine Coleman in the town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Her father, Joshua Coleman, was also a self-taught mathematician who took
Copyright ©fatunfo.pages.dev 2025