Katherine Johnson, a historic figure and ground-breaking NASA mathematician who was depicted in “Hidden Figures,” died Monday, February 24, at age 101. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the Oscar-nominated movie about black women whose work at NASA was essential during the space race. Katherine was also a Diamond Soror of the Lambda Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated.
“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 a statement.
In a tweet, he called Johnson “an American hero.”
Katherine was born in West Virginia and in 1918, she skipped several grades due to her “intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers,” her NASA profile says. After she graduated from West Virginia State College with the highest honors and degrees in mathematics and French, she taught at a black public school in Virginia.
She was told about a position in the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) so she moved to Newport News, Virginia and began working at the Langley Laboratory in Virginia.
Katherine said that her greatest contribution to space exploration was making the “calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module.” She also did work that contributed towards America’s first orbital flight piloted by John Glenn. Most astronauts weren’t sure about “putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts,” according to NASA. So Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl,” alluding to Johnson, to run the computer equations by hand. “If she says they’re good,” Johnson remembered Glenn saying, “then I’m ready to go.”
In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Katherine the Presidential Medal of Freedom which is America’s highest civilian honor. West Virginia State University commemorated her accomplishments with a bronze statue on campus and a scholarship in her name. In 2016, Katherine attended a ceremony at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia where a $30 million Computational Research Facility was named in her honor.
Let’s continue to keep Katherine’s family in our prayers and remember her famous words: “Like what you do best, and then you will do your best.”