Katherine Johnson's Life And Accomplishments

When you think about math you think of it as a stereotypically male thing. Although that may be true that isn’t the case for Katherine Johnson. She isn’t well known but her background and life are amazing. I read about her online on a Social Media platform once and I found her interesting. So this is the perfect paper to write about her. Born on August 26, 1918 in White Sulphure Springs, West Virginia Katherine Johnson began a long story of achievement. She is still alive today living at the age of 98. She’s had quite the lifetime of achievements. At the age of just 10 years old she was already a freshmen in High School at West Virginia State High School. By the time she was 14 she had graduated High School, and from there she went to college at 15 at West Virginia State College and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Math. As an African American at a time where they weren’t able to go to school past the 8th grade this was extremely impressive. After finishing college she went on to teach math. She got married and had kids and became a stay at home mom before working at NASA.

It was called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. She worked as a “computer” until 1958 When NASA started to use computers they would still often ask her to double-check the computers calculations. Alan Shepherd the first man in space relied on her calculations. Her calculations were used in the Apollo Moon Landing and the Space Shuttle Program. She even calculated the first mission to Space. She worked at NASA until 1986. When she retired. Her background also includes co-writing 26 Scientific Papers. Then on November 24th, 2015 she received the award for the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack