If I gave you that answer last year, it’s the same now. And it was a joy to contribute to the literature that was going to be coming out.īut you know, math is the same. I like the stars and the stories we were telling. The main thing is I liked what I was doing. Her father, Joshua Coleman, had farmed and worked as a lumberman, and, in the 1930s, was employed at the local upmarket resort, the Greenbrier. I didn’t do anything alone but try to go to the root of the question – and succeeded there. Her calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landings and the start of the Space Shuttle program. ![]() Katherine continued to work at NASA until 1986. At the time, there were no high schools for African-Americans, so Katherine was enrolled. Katherine Johnson, the trailblazing NASA mathematician, wins the Hubbard Medal for her calculations that made space exploration possible. Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician with a 35-year career at NASA who earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform those tasks. But when they went to computers, they called over and said, "Tell her to check and see if the computer trajectory they had calculated was correct." So I checked it, and it was correct. Her biological father, Joshua Coleman, was a farmer and lumberman. Katherine Coleman Johnson (August 26, 1918February 24, 2020) Katherine Johnson, Source: NASA. You could do much more, much faster on the computer. You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll do it backward and tell you when to take off." That was my forte.Įven after NASA had electronic computers, John Glenn requested that Katherine personally recheck the computer calculations before his 1962 Friendship 7 flight – the first American mission to orbit Earth. As a human computer, Katherine calculated the trajectory for astronaut Alan Shepard’s 1961 Freedom 7 mission to space – the first spaceflight for an American.Įarly on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start.
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