The Silver Snoopy Award is given to people who have made excellent contributions to flight safety and mission success. At the same event, she received a Silver Snoopy Award from Leland Melvin, an astronaut and former NASA associate administrator for education. This past 5th of May, she returned to NASA Langley for the 55th anniversary of Shepard’s flight and because a computer research facility was named in her honor. She received various recognitions from NASA, and on November 24, 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the nation’s highest civilian honor) by President Barack Obama. She contributed this and more at the Langley Research Center until she retired in 1986 after 33 years of working there. She worked on the Space Shuttle Program and the Earth Resources Satellite, and she encouraged students to seek careers in science and technology. She made sure the calculations made by early computers were correct in order to send John Glenn into orbit in 1962, as well as the 1969 Apollo 11 launch to the moon. Johnson calculated how the first American was going to be launched into space thus, the 1961 flight of Alan Shepard was accomplished. They got used to me asking questions and being the only woman (at the meetings).” “They didn’t ask questions or take the task any further. “The women did what they were told to do,” she said. She stood out from the other female workers because not only did she do the job, but she asked questions along the way. She was one of the African-American women hired to work as “computers” in the Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson began her career in 1953 at the NASA Langley Research Center in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. She worked as a math teacher and then as a stay-at-home mom before working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) - now known as NASA. He’d tell me that I should know the answer, and I finally had to tell him that I did know the answer, but the other students did not.” She always asked questions to learn more and succeed in math, which would later become her career.Īt age 18, she graduated summa cum laude with bachelor of science degrees in mathematics and French. When it came to her classes, she would understood the previous day’s lesson, but she would notice that her classmates sometimes did not Johnson said, “I would ask questions to help them. When deciding what she should major in, Johnson hesitated between English, French, and mathematics. ![]() ![]() Her academic performance allowed her to take advanced classes and graduate from high school at age 14. ![]() Johnson’s father was determined to have his daughter continue her education, so he drove 120 miles to take her to high school. By the time she was 10 years old, she was a high school freshman, and this was during a time when many African Americans did not have the luxury of being educated and for those who did go to school, their education normally stopped after eighth grade. The movie version will be in theaters starting January 6, 2017.īorn on August 26, 1912, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Katherine Johnson was fascinated with numbers from a young age. Her life (among others’) has been written about in the book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly. It was a different story for Katherine Johnson. If you read The Astronaut Wives Club or watched its TV series, you may know that women were supporting observers of their husbands who worked at NASA while the majority of their time was spent being stay-at-home wives and/or mothers. Their work in these “male-dominated” categories have impacted society immeasurably, and - as we begin 2017 - they can serve as motivation to reach for your dreams no matter what. Though history often overlooks them, many women have proven to have successful careers in STEM: science, technology, engineering and math. This month you’ll discover the success story of Katherine Johnson, who graduated from college at age 18 and went on to be a mathematician who worked for NASA. If you read October’s article, you learned about Fatima Al-Fihri: the woman who created the first university. Each month we’ll contin ue to write about a historical badass lady so you can learn about their contributions to society and be inspired. ![]() The year is almost over, but that doesn’t mean that our stories about Badass Women in History will stop.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |