Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson in 2008
Born	Katherine Coleman (1918-08-26)August 26, 1918 White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, US
Died	February 24, 2020(2020-02-24) (aged 101) Newport News, Virginia, US
Nationality	American
Alma mater	West Virginia State University, West Virginia University
Occupation(s)	Physicist, Mathematician
Employer(s)	NACA, NASA
Known for	Calculating the trajectories for many NASA missions

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an African American physicist and mathematician. She finished schooling at a very early age. Katherine Johnson was 1 of the first 3 black people allowed to study at West Virginia University, because which before that was officially racist and did not let black people be students. She was known for her work on the United States' aeronautics and space programs where she worked with the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA.

She was also known for accuracy in computerized celestial navigation. She made it possible for many space flights such as Project Mercury, including the early NASA missions of John Glenn and Alan Shepard, and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon, through the Space Shuttle program to happen. Her calculations were critical to the success of these missions.

Johnson also did calculations for plans for a mission to Mars. Katherine Goble Johnson wrote 26 research reports. She was the first woman to attend an editorial meeting at NASA.

In 2015, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was included in the BBC series 100 Women the next year.

NASA said that she had a "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist."

Johnson died on February 24, 2020 at her home in Newport News, Virginia at the age of 101.

Related pages

• Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States