After her confirmation, Glenn said “If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go.” Using a desktop mechanical calculator, Johnson confirmed the numbers from the computer. Glenn specifically asked for Johnson to perform the calculations that had been run on the computers. Glenn and some of the other astronauts were wary of entrusting their lives to equations run on electronic computers. In 1962 Johnson famously calculated the trajectory for the Friendship 7 orbital flight of John Glenn. In 1961 she calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Earth orbital mission. In 1960 she coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, an important report that laid out the equations for determining landing position for orbital spaceflight.
NACA was renamed National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) in 1958, and Johnson became an aerospace technologist within NASA’s Spacecraft Controls branch. Johnson referred to the group as “computers who wore skirts.” Her advanced understanding of analytical geometry led to her assignment at the Maneuver Loads branch of the Flight Research Division of NACA.
Initially, Katherine was part of an all-woman team that performed mathematical analysis on data collected from flight tests and the black boxes of airplanes. Johnson still wanted to pursue a career in mathematics, and in 1953 she secured a job at the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia. She left the program after a year to start a family, eventually raising three daughters. After marrying in 1939, she left teaching and enrolled at West Virginia University, the first African-American woman to enroll at the graduate level at the university. She graduated summa cum laude in 1937 with degrees in both mathematics and French.įollowing her graduation, Johnson began teaching at a public school in Marion, Virginia. She mastered every mathematics course offered at the college and several specialty courses were added specifically for her. Following her graduation at age 14, she enrolled at West Virginia State College, a historically black university in Institute, West Virginia. From a young age, she exhibited a remarkable talent for mathematics and skipped several grades in school, beginning high school at only 10 years old. and play bridge at lunch.Katherine Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job. Johnson notably tried to forget about this physical segregation, saying she "didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. Due to national laws at the time, however, the black workforce had to use completely separate restrooms, computers, and office spaces than their white counterparts. Johnson then worked for the next 5 years essentially as a human-computer, checking calculations from digital computers. She ultimately applied and accepted an offer in 1953.
She started out as a teacher in her early career, but in 1952, she heard that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring African American mathematicians. She soon decided to try and make a career of being a research mathematician, which was a lofty goal for an African American woman to achieve at the time. The history of Katherine Johnsonīorn Augst 26th, 1918, she quickly demonstrated impeccable mathematical skills. “If she says they’re good then I’m ready to go,” something Johnson has said Glenn said to her during her time at NASA. The astronauts were fearful that the computers onboard would break, so they relied on Katherine's mathematical expertise to run everything out on paper. What made Johnson's achievements in the Apollo program so notable was that she had to do most of the space trajectory calculations by hand. Today, we celebrate her 101 years of life and honor her legacy of excellence that broke down racial and social barriers: /dGiGmEVvAW We're saddened by the passing of celebrated #HiddenFigures mathematician Katherine Johnson. NASA commented on Johnson's passing in a tweet, below.
0 kommentar(er)
