An outstanding NASA mathematician who goes by the name, Katherine Johnson has died on Monday, February 24, at the age of 101.
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The mathematician’s singular contribution made it possible for the first man Neil Armstrong to land on the moon with Apollo 11 in 1969.
According to Nationalgeographic.com, for decades, Johnson, an African-American woman, was among NASA’s largely uncelebrated pioneers because she was a woman of colour but that did not stop her profound impact from being felt.
SIRSLAYOUT.com notes that due to her role in putting America on historical records for sending the first human beings to the moon, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 by ex-president Barrack Obama.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal are regarded as the highest civilian awards of the United States.
For the most part, the brilliant contribution of the amazing young woman was kept under the blanket until 2016, when Margot Lee Shetterly published the book Hidden Figures:
The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.
Subsequently, a movie with the same title was made which told her story in great detail and made Katherine Johnson become the world-renowned individual she needed to be.
It is indicated that long before NASA developed high-tech computers that could be trusted with complicated and delicate calculations, Katherine Johnson was a human ‘computer’ that was relied on anytime the going got tough.
Even at times when actual computers finally came around, the answers from the various computer software had to be compared with those of Katherine Johnson to ascertain their reliability.
Meanwhile, a black woman identified as Henrietta Lacks whose body cells had extraordinary ability to multiply outside her body was the icon behind the creation of the polio vaccine without her knowledge.
The embassy said the African-American journalist was an early leader in the civil rights movement who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s.
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