Katherine Johnson
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031037
Happy birthday Katherine Johnson! Born in 1918 in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, Johnson did graduate work in mathematics at West Virginia University. She had embarked on a career as an elementary career teacher when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (which later became NASA) recruited her to compute the trajectories and orbits of spacecraft. Johnson calculated the trajectory of Alan Shepard’s mission in which he became the first American in space. In the early 1960s, when NASA switched to the fully computerized calculation of orbital mechanics, Johnson verified the calculations. She later became a computer scientist herself.
Date in History: 26 August 1918
