![]() Katherine Johnson was at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Va. Currently, the NASA archives contain more than 25 scientific reports on space flight history authored or co-authored by Johnson, the largest number by any African-American or woman. In 1960, her efforts helped her become the first African-American and the first woman to have her name on a NASA research report. She also had to be “assertive and aggressive” about receiving credit for her contributions to research at NASA. ![]() In 1940, she agreed to serve as one of three carefully selected students to desegregate West Virginia University’s graduate program. Long before psychologist Angela Duckworth called attention to the power of passion and perseverance in the form of grit, Katherine Johnson modeled this stalwart characteristic. She used these analytical skills to verify the computer calculations for John Glenn’s orbit around the earth and to help determine the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon, among others. Mathematics concepts build on one another and the mathematics she learned in this class helped her in her work at NASA many years later. Once Johnson completed the standard mathematics curriculum at West Virginia State College, Claytor created advanced classes just for her, including a course on analytic geometry. In the 1930s, a little over 100 American women counted themselves as professional mathematicians.īarack Obama awarded Katherine Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Claytor encouraged Katherine to become a research mathematician. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a Ph.D. While there, she had the good fortune to learn from W. Johnson graduated from West Virginia State College at the age of 18. ![]() Thirteen years older than Johnson, she modeled a life of possibility. King taught Johnson geometry and encouraged her mathematical pursuits. King taught at the laboratory high school while she worked to become one of the first African-American women to earn masters degrees in math and chemistry. While at West Virginia State, Johnson took classes with Angie Turner King. Johnson entered West Virginia State College High School as a preteen and enrolled at the age of 14. Because there was no high school for African-American children in their hometown of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the family relocated to Institute, West Virginia, during the school year.
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