Katherine johnson nasa mathemation3/14/2023 She continued to dedicate herself to her job, working long hours during the turbulent time of the Cold War and the Space Race. In 1959, she married US Army officer James Johnson, and their family grew to include six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. ![]() Her husband James died of a brain tumor in 1956, leaving her a single mother of three children at 38. Her role was made permanent two weeks later, after bosses recognized her mathematical abilities. She joined as a temp, and was told to analyze data compiled from flight tests. Her career at NASA – known then as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) – didn’t begin until 1953, after a relative told her the Langley Research Center in Virginia was hiring for the blacks-only wing of its computing section. She turned to teaching after giving birth to three daughters, Constance, Joylette, and Katherine, in all. But she dropped out a year later when she became pregnant, and focused on her new family. She then married her first husband James Goble in 1939, quit teaching, and attended graduate school at West Virginia University after she was chosen, alongside two men, to be the first black students there. ![]() Mentored by William Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to achieve a PhD in mathematics, Johnson graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia State College, with degrees in mathematics and French, at the age of 18.ĭespite her top grades, though, she was unable to find a job in academia during a time when African Americans were heavily discriminated against. She was 101.īorn Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918, she was an exceptionally precocious child, and was allowed to skip several grades ahead in school. Obit Katherine Johnson, the pioneering African-American mathematician whose calculations ensured NASA's astronauts safely set foot on the Moon in 1969, died today.
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