She received a full academic scholarship to the historically Black West Virginia State College, from which she graduated summa cum laude with degrees in math and French. As Shetterly puts it, she was a “black girl from rural West Virginia, born at a time when the odds were more likely that she would die before age thirty-five than even finish high school.” Born in 1918, Johnson was a precocious child who counted everything from stars to stair steps. Make no mistake: Katherine Johnson was a genius. It does not detract from Johnson’s genius to say that in her life of stunning achievement - and her long-overdue fame - she also represented a cohort of women who pioneered the STEM field in the mid-20th century, and who are only now beginning to receive credit. Henson portrayed her in the film adaptation of Margot Lee Shetterly’s best-selling book, Hidden Figures. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, the actor Taraji P. But her renown grew, and by the time she died this year, at 101, she had become a household name. In the world at large, Johnson was mostly unsung. The historic flight would prove an important step toward the ultimate goal of sending an American to orbit Earth.Īt the time, Johnson’s pivotal contribution to human spaceflight was known within NASA, as well as in the tight-knit community of African Americans she knew in the Hampton Roads, Virginia, area - many of whom, like her, worked at NASA’s Langley research facility. In 1961, the Freedom 7 mission sent astronaut Alan Shepard, packed in an almost impossibly tiny capsule, hurtling up into space thanks to Johnson, he also came down, safely.
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