Katherine Johnson (26 agos 1918 año – 24 feb 2020 año)

Descripción:

Katherine Johnson (August 26, 1918 - February 24, 2020), Mathematician

Life:
Katherine Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The county in which Johnson lived did not offer public schooling for African-American students past the eighth grade. Therefore, Johnson’s parents sent her and her siblings to another county to attend high school. She graduated at the age of 14 and enrolled at West Virginia State where she majored in mathematics and French. Her mentors during this time included Angie Turner King, mathematician and chemist, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. She graduated summa cum laude in 1937 at age 18. After graduating Johnson began to teach at a public school in Virginia. After she got married, she stopped teaching to go back to school and became the only black woman and one of three African-Americans selected to integrate the graduate school of West Virginia University. This was soon after the The United States Supreme Court ruled that states that provided public higher education to white students also had to provide it to black students, to be satisfied either by establishing black colleges and universities or by admitting black students to previously white-only universities.

Contributions to Science:
Johnson began her career as a mathematician by accepting an offer from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in June 1953. Johnson’s main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. However, due to her assertive nature and knowledge of analytic geometry, Johnson helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues. The first five years of Kohnson’s career were during racial segregation, so she was required to use separate bathrooms, working areas, eating areas from her white peers. NACA disbanded the colored computing pool in 1958 when the agency was superseded by NASA, which adopted digital computers. In addition to facing racism in the workplace, as a woman, Johnson also faced sexism. In the early days of NASA women were not allowed to put their names on the reports, Johnson broke that barrier and became the first woman in her division to have her name on a report. From 1958 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. When NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify the computer's numbers; Glenn had asked for her specifically and had refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations. In 1961, her work helped to ensure that Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 Mercury capsule would be found quickly after landing, using the accurate trajectory that had been established. Perhaps, her most memorable work was when she helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon.

Death:
Johnson died at a retirement home in Newport News on February 24, 2020, at age 101.[36][3] Following her death, Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, described her as "an American hero" and stated that "her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten."

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