Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson was born in 1918. She received her bachelor degree from West Virginia State in mathematics and French. In 1953, Johnson was hired at NACA, now NASA. She was one of the few black women who worked at NACA. Quickly after being hired, she was assigned to the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division. She worked on analyzing data from flight tests and a plane crash. Later, she did calculations and trajectory analysis for the Freedom 7 mission. She also co-authored a report with equations for orbital spaceflight. In 1962, astronaut John Glenn required Johnson to verify the numbers calculated by the computers as part of the preflight checklist. Johnson did many calculations for NASA. Eventually, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2020, she passed away at the age of 101.