Katherine Johnson
(c) NBC News
Creola Katherine Johnson was born on this day in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia to Joshua McKinley Coleman and Joyletta Roberta Coleman.
As a young pupil, Johnson showed strong ability in the mathematics department. Due to schools in her area not offering classes for African-American students, her parents made plans to send her to an institute on the campus of West Virginia State College instead.
By age 15, Johnson began college and took every single math course offered by the university. She graduated at 18 and became a teacher. At age 34, while attending a family gathering she was made aware that NACA (now NASA) was looking for Black women to solve math problems and be apart of their Guidance and Navigation department. In 1953, she was hired.
Johnson was vital in using geometry and finding paths for space travel. Her math helped send astronauts to the moon and back various times. From 1958 until her retirement, she was an aerospace technologist at NASA.
Creola Katherine Johnson's work was put on the big screen in the movie Hidden Figures, where she was one of the 3 Black Female Mathematicians working to send astronaut John Glenn into orbit.
Johnson passed away in February 24th of this year at 101 years old.
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