![]() In december 1956 Katherine lost her husband to cancer, as she was wrapping up the work for the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division. She worked in the all black branch of the project, analysing data from flight tests.īut as we all know life can’t always come easy. ![]() Her temporary place there soon became permanent when she became a permanent member of the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division. Being the ambitious woman that she was, after successfully raising her three daughters, she moved in 1953 with her husband to pursue the opportunity to work at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NACA for short. Katherine Johnson left her teaching job to start with the graduate math program there, but she decided to leave after the first period, to focus on raising her family. Katherine Johnson was the only black woman that got offered a spot at the state’s flagship school, West Virginia University. In 1939, the state government decided to have more integration in their higher education. She took on a job as a mathematics teacher at a black public school in Virginia. At 18 she enrolled in the historically black West Virginia State College, from which she graduated with the highest honours in mathematics and French of her year. ![]() Because of her intellect she skipped several grades which made her start highschool at the young age of 10. With her impressive career Katherine Johnson is a pioneer for women in science, especially for women of colour.įrom a young age, Katherine stood out to be a bright student, especially with her talent in mathematics. ![]() But the film’s name already indicates it: Katherine Johnson has remained unknown along with a great number of brilliant women in the history of NASA, despite their many accomplishments and their great contributions to American spacecraft. The name Katherine Jonhson might sound familiar nowadays, due to her being the main character in the autobiographical film Hidden Figures that came out in 2016. President Barack Obama presents the presidential medal of freedom to Katherine Johnson in 2015.For the third publication of the Women in Timeline project, we’d like to focus on the woman who helped to reach a milestone in all of human history: to put the first man on the moon. In the summer of 1953, Johnson began work at Langley and spent the next four years analyzing flight test data. In 1952, a family member told her that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NASA's predecessor) Langley laboratory was hiring for its all-black computing section. After one semester at West Virginia University, Johnson left to start a family. Johnson was one of three black students chosen to integrate West Virginia's graduate schools in 1939. The next year, Johnson was one of three black women at NASA whose story was told in the movie Hidden Figures, starring Taraji P. "In her 33 years at NASA, Katherine was a pioneer who broke the barriers of race and gender, showing generations of young people that everyone can excel in math and science and reach for the stars," Obama said during the ceremony. Johnson's achievements didn't receive mainstream attention until President Obama recognized her contributions in 2015 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. Today, we celebrate her 101 years of life and honor her legacy of excellence that broke down racial and social barriers: /dGiGmEVvAW We're saddened by the passing of celebrated #HiddenFigures mathematician Katherine Johnson.
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