Johnson overcame racial and gender-based discrimination to become an integral part of Nasa’s work in space exploration
Katherine Johnson, one of the trailblazing African American mathematicians whose story was told in the hit film Hidden Figures, has died, Nasa announced on Monday. She was 101.
In a statement, the US space agency said: “Today, we celebrate her 101 years of life and honor her legacy of excellence that broke down racial and social barriers.”Johnson worked at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or Naca, a segregated computing unit which became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Nasa, in 1958. Inside the Naca facility in Hampton, Virginia, signs indicated which bathrooms women and African Americans could use.
Johnson first worked on airplane programs, then joined Project Mercury, the first US human space program. In 1961, she contributed trajectory analysis to Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space.
Johnson was also known for verifying calculations by the Nasa computer that plotted John Glenn’s mission into orbit, with lightning speed that led colleagues to call her a “human computer”.
"Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing. Sometimes they have more imagination than men"
In a tweet, the Nasa administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said “our Nasa family” was saddened by the death of “an American hero”.
“Her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten,” he said.
In the 2016 book Hidden Figures, on which the film of the same title was based, the author Margot Lee Shetterly wrote of Johnson’s “eye-numbing, disorienting work” crunching numbers.
“Katherine organized herself immediately at her desk, growing phone-book-thick stacks of data sheets a number at a time, blocking out everything except the labyrinth of trajectory equations,” Shetterly wrote.
On Monday, Shetterly told the Associated Press Johnson’s story shone “a light on the stories of so many other people” and provided “a new way to look at black history, women’s history and American history”.
Johnson was born in August 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. As the small town had no schools for blacks beyond the eighth grade, her father sent her and her siblings to Institute, West Virginia, for high school. She graduated from the historically black West Virginia State College and taught at black public schools before becoming one of three black students to integrate West Virginia graduate schools in 1939.
She joined Naca in 1952 but with fellow mathematicians Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Dr Christine Darden, her story of overcoming racial and gender-based discrimination to become an integral part of Nasa’s work in space exploration was largely overlooked until the release of Theodore Melfi’s Oscar-nominated film in 2017. Onscreen, Johnson was portrayed by Taraji P Henson.
Among tributes on Monday, the science writer Maryam Zaringhalam posted a quote by Johnson: “Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing. Sometimes they have more imagination than men.”
Johnson worked on the Space Shuttle program until 1986, then spent her retirement encouraging students to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
She considered her work on the Apollo moon missions to be her greatest contribution to space exploration, and in a 2008 interview told Nasa there had been little time to worry about the issues common in her era, such as misogyny and racism.
“My dad taught us, ‘You are as good as anybody in this town but you’re no better,’” Johnson said. “I don’t have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I’m as good as anybody, but no better.”
In 2015, Barack Obama awarded Johnson the presidential medal of freedom. In November 2019, she was selected to receive to the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor presented by Congress to a civilian.
Darden, 77, is now the only living Hidden Figure.
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