Who is Catherine G Johnson?
Catherine G Johnson also famous as “Katherine Globe” was a well known an American Mathematician. Moreover, she played a huge role to change the entire direction of American Space flight progress. Catherine was born on 26 August 1918 in White Sulphur Spring, West Virginia, USA. She was one of the first three black students who got recommendations for the integration of West Virginia’s graduate school. To cover his whole life will require a lot of time and space. However, here I am going to tell you briefly about her. For further details, you can visit this site.
Education
From an early age, Cathrine used to had great brilliance and huge interest in numbers. Moreover, she secured many high grades in the school exams. Because of her brilliance, she was attending high school at the age of just 13. Moreover, at the age of 18, she joined the famous and historical campus of West Virginia State College. Thus all his efforts and hard work earned him the BS Mathematics degree in 1937. Moreover, she was the first black woman along with other two men to get a spot at the state’s flagship school. The President of WV’s state himself selected her for that spot. Hence it was a clear recognition of her skills and talent.
The career of Catherine G Johnson
Katherine g started her career with teaching but it was until 1952. When one of her relatives told her about positions at NACA for only blacks. In 1953, she secured a position at NACA and she moved to Newport News with her family to pursue the career. During her first two weeks in the office, her HOD Vaughan assigned him the duty in Flight Research Division. Here, her hidden skills oozed out and this temporary position soon became permanent.
Kathrine G NASA Achievements
1957 was the life-changing year of Katherine when the Soviet launched their satellite, Sputnik. She provided the Maths related and wrote a series of notes which later become essential documents for Flight Research Division. Moreover, in 1961, Catherine did the trajectory analysis for Mission Freedom 7 of Alan. In 1962, when NASA was ready to launch Orbital mission, she was the part of the group. However, his biggest success was one the John Glenn the mission head was trusting more her than the computers. Pilots were wary that how a computer will be a source of our communication. Moreover, our lives will be totally dependant on the computer, who will guarantee the successful mission. Then Glenn said, call Catherine and if she said it will work then I am ready to go.
Later, the mission completed with success and she got huge appreciation. This successful mission put America ahead of the Soviet Union. However, in 1986, she retired from NASA after an affiliation of 33 years. Her major contributions are the following,
- Helped Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module
- Worked on Space Shuttle
- Successful working on Earth Resources Technolgy Satellite
- Author of 26 research reports
Moreover, in recognition of her services to America, President Barack Obama awarded her the highest American civilian award, “Presidential Medal of Freedom” in 2015. Catherine died on 24 February 2020 at the age of 101 years.
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