In 2015, at age 97, Katherine Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. “I loved going to work every single day,” she says. She retired in 1986, after thirty-three years at Langley. Space scientist, and mathematician Katherine Johnson poses for a portrait at work at NASA Langley Research Center in 1980 in Hampton, Virginia. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. Portrait of NASA human computer and African-American mathematical pioneer Katherine Johnson at NASA Langley Research Center, 1983. Her story is depicted in the 2016 movie Hidden. When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talks about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. One of NASAs human computers, Katherine Johnson performed the complex calculations that enabled humans to successfully achieve space flight. Jackson, a 1942 graduate of the Hampton Institute with a dual degree in math and physical sciences, joined the division in 1951, working under Vaughan for two years before being pulled for an engineering position. The informational 2-day outreach event for high school girls from 150 schools addressed students’ questions about the field. Katherine Johnson Mary Jackson was another member of the WAC division while it still existed as a segregated unit. In October 1964, Johnson attended a symposium on American Women in Science and Engineering sponsored by the the MIT Association of Women Students. Johnsonwas the physicist and mathematician whose calculations were critical to NASA missions sending astronauts into orbit and to the moon and whose story is chronicled in Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures.
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