Born in 1918, Katherine Johnson is an African-American mother of three girls as well as a mathematician. Johnson, who calls herself a "Fan of numbers," has significantly aided NASA's Mercury and Apollo 11 Projects.
She first became interested in numbers when she was ten years old. She enrolled in high school that same year, which caught the attention of her professors.
When Katherine Johnson was just 10 years old, her professors believed she should enrol in high school because of her aptitude with mathematics. Her instructors generously sponsored Katherine's schooling by raising money among themselves because her family wasn't wealthy.
Her father also relocated to West Virginia to pursue a good education after realising his daughter's potential.
Johnson did not contradict her father by completing high school at the age of 14 and college at the age of 18. The National Advisory Board for Aeronautics (NACA), which came before NASA, started hiring women of African American heritage to perform the computations during World War II. With her great intellect, Katherine also began working here. Katherine refers to herself and her coworkers in this sentence as "computers in skirts."
The Mercury and Apollo 11 projects also benefited greatly from NASA's assistance. In a sense, it made it possible for America to land on the Moon and send the first man into space. They asked her to double-check the computer calculations because she performed the computations so precisely.
In order to ensure that his computer calculations were accurate before launch, astronaut John Glenn asked Katherine Johnson in 1962.
Fortunately for Katherine, she was able to overcome this obstacle by just being brilliant and assertive at work. She was so skilled at what she did—better than the male engineers she computed for—that she played a critical part in Project Mercury, NASA's initiative to launch the first person into space.
Katherine combined her aptitude for mathematics with her knowledge of computers to work at NASA until 1986, producing computations that were almost flawless. Her estimates were essential to the Apollo 11 mission's Moon landing.
The Medal of Freedom is the country's highest honour for citizenship. Additionally in 2017, NASA unveiled the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility, a research facility. Today, Katherine G. Johnson turns 100 and continues to take part in NASA initiatives.
In the film Hidden Figures, Katherine Johnson and the unsung heroes who propelled America into space are described. After the film was out, Katherine Johnson told her screenwriter, "I'm not important, I just performed my job." She displayed her humility to us.
All the pictures are from public domain.