Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Katherine Johnson has received more than 10,761,023 page views. Her biography is available in 48 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 33 in 2019). Katherine Johnson is the 79th most popular mathematician (up from 119th in 2019), the 421st most popular biography from United States (up from 778th in 2019) and the 5th most popular American Mathematician.

Katherine Johnson is most famous for being one of the three African-American women who helped NASA launch John Glenn into space in 1962.