Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson [1918 - 2020] was a Black American mathematician whose manual (not computer-aided) calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of 1962’s first U.S. manned spaceflight mission and many subsequent ones. Johnson's contributions to space exploration were immortalized in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. Admirable as her achievements are, her path to it is even more so. Born in 1918 in West Virginia, her brilliance with numbers was evident in elementary school. She graduated with highest honors from an historically Black college in 1937 but was blocked by race and gender segregation from using her mathematical knowledge until 1952, when she joined a segregated unit of a forerunner of NASA.