Pioneering NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson has passed away at the age of 101, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Monday morning (Feb. 24). Johnson’s story was depicted in the 2016 Oscar-nominated movie Hidden Figures, where she was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson.
“She was an American hero and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten,” Bridenstine wrote. “The NASA family will never forget Katherine Johnson’s courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her. Her story and her grace continue to inspire the world.”
Johnson was a trailblazer both as a woman and as a person of color. She began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1953 and in 1961, she did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s mission Freedom 7, which was America’s first human spaceflight.
She is best known, however, for her 1962 work on John Glenn’s orbital spaceflight. As NASA points out, “Astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to ‘get the girl’ — Johnson — to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. ‘If she says they’re good,’ Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, ‘then I’m ready to go.’”
Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, by Barack Obama in 2015, when she was 97 years old — something Bridenstine calls “a well-deserved recognition.” You can read Bridenstine’s full statement about Johnson’s passing below.
Our @NASA family is sad to learn the news that Katherine Johnson passed away this morning at 101 years old. She was an American hero and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten. https://t.co/UPOqo0sLfb pic.twitter.com/AgtxRnA89h
— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) February 24, 2020
The @NASA family will never forget Katherine Johnson's courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her. Her story and her grace continue to inspire the world. https://t.co/UPOqo0sLfb pic.twitter.com/xwnRX9oZoi
— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) February 24, 2020
Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
