Famed NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson – whose brilliance the world came to know of through the movie “Hidden Figures” – died Monday. She was 101.
NASA made the announcement of Johnson’s death via Twitter and released an official statement on its website.
“NASA is deeply saddened by the loss of a leader from our pioneering days … Ms. Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in the official statement. “At NASA we will never forget her courage and leadership and the milestones we could not have reached without her.”
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Known as a “human computer,” Johnson’s uncanny ability with numbers and equations helped America become the first nation to send a man into space. She and several other Black women were pioneers at NASA, beginning her career in 1953, CNN reported. Over a career that spanned three decades, Johnson was a key part of several iconic NASA missions.
As “Hidden Figures” depicts, Johnson was also the one John Glenn entrusted to verify the calculations for his history-making orbit around the Earth. What made her feats more impressive was she preferred to make the calculations by hand.
Even before making history at NASA, Johnson was breaking barriers, According to her NASA biography, she “handpicked to be one of three Black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools.”
According to USA Today, during her career at NASA, “Johnson also contributed to Apollo missions, helped the agency transition to computers and went on to win five NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement awards. She retired in 1986.”
Though her work went largely unnoticed for much of her life, Johnson once told NASA, “I loved going to work every single day.”
