Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician and Hidden Figures inspiration, dies at 101
Long before she helped develop the mathematical formulas that got Americans into space, she was born Katherine Coleman in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Her brilliance with math allowed her to skip some grades, putting her in high school by age 13 and college by age 18. In 1939, West Virginia decided to quietly start integrating its graduate schools, and West Virginia State College president John W.
In 1956 Goble died of cancer, and in 1957 the Soviet Union made history by launching the satellite Sputnik into space. Johnson’s math helped analyze early American attempts to match the Soviets, and she provided trajectory analysis for Alan Shepherd’s Freedom 7 mission in 1961, America’s first manned spaceflight. But her most famous contribution to NASA came in 1962, during John Glenn’s spaceflight. NASA computers had been programmed with calculations, but Glenn didn’t trust the machines.
“NASA is deeply saddened by the loss of a leader from our pioneering days, and we sent our deepest condolences to the family of Katherine Johnson,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. “Ms. Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made human strides that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space.”
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