


Melvin, and a NASA Group Achievement Award. Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson is a pioneer of the American space movement. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Silver Snoopy Award from NASA astronaut Leland D. When Katherine Johnson retired from NASA in 1986, she capped off an astonishing career as one of the most invaluable computers in the history of the agency. Towards the end of her life, these contributions began to receive the recognition they deserve. On November 24, 2015, she received the nations highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Barack H. She also contributed to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program and worked on plans for a mission to Mars. Johnson, who co-authored twenty-six scientific papers, has been the recipient of NASA’s Lunar Spacecraft and Operation’s Group Achievement Award and NASA’s Apollo Group Achievement Award. The highlights? Calculations for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit - not to mention rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the moon. There, she calculated trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights. In 2019, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Melvin as well as a NASA Group Achievement Award. In 2016, she was presented with the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA astronaut Leland D. “You lose your curiosity when you stop learning.”īy 1958, she had moved into the Spacecraft Controls Branch. In 2015, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama. The space agency refers to her historical role as “one of the first African American women to work as a NASA scientist.”
KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA ACHIEVEMENT MANUAL
A Rocketing Careerĭuring her 33-year career at NASA (and its predecessor NACA), she earned herself a reputation for acing complex manual calculations and pioneering the use of computers. Johnson accepted a job offer from the agency in June 1953 and was initially assigned to Dorothy Vaughan’s group. At a family gathering in 1952, a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring mathematicians - including African Americans. She began working as a teacher, but her life would soon change dramatically. She received the NASA Langely Research Center Special Achievement Award in 1971, 1980, 1984, 19.

By 1937, she graduated from West Virginia State with degrees in mathematics and French at the age of just 18. Johnson has been the recipient of NASA’s Lunar Spacecraft and Operation’s Group Achievement Award and NASA’s Apollo Group Achievement Award. Although Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African American students past the eighth grade, her parents were determined to support her talent and enrolled her at a high school in Institute, West Virginia when she was 10 - splitting their time between there and their home in White Sulphur Springs. spaceflights into orbit.įrom an early age, Johnson revealed amazing mathematical abilities. Creola Katherine Johnson (1918–2020) was a talented African American mathematician and NASA employee whose calculations helped set the first crewed U.S.
