How did katherine johnson die
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Katherine Johnson: A Lifetime of STEM
Katherine Johnson loved to count. “I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed … anything that could be counted, I did.” And so it began for this young girl from West Virginia. Born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., Johnson’s love for mathematics was inherent, an inclination she had from birth. At a young age, she was ready and anxious to go to school. She could vividly remember watching her older siblings go to school and wishing so much that she could go with them. The opportunity to attend school finally did come. Johnson so excelled that she began her studies in the second grade, then moved into advanced classes. By age 10, Johnson was in high school.
Lesson: Love learning.
In school, one teacher stood out to Johnson. Miss Turner taught geometry, and Johnson couldn’t wait to take her class. The teacher was a great encourager to the students and a strong mentor to many of them. Johnson did so well in her classes that she graduated early from high
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Katherine Johnson
The stars were always within reach for Katherine Johnson. Using her mathematics skills, she helped NASA send astronauts to the moon and return them safely home. She also overcame racial and gender hurdles that helped make giant leaps for humankind.
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Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on August 26, 1918. Math came easy to her, but she worked hard to master geometry and algebra. She started high school when she was just 10 years old (most kids are in fourth or fifth grade when they’re 10!) and college when she was 15. After she graduated with honors at 18, Johnson taught Black students math. She later enrolled in graduate school at West Virginia University to study math but left early to raise a family and return to teaching.
In 1952, when she was 34 years old, she learned about jobs for Black women with mathematics and computing skills at the Langley laboratory at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which would later become NASA. She and the othe
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Katherine Johnson
- Birthdate
- 1918/08/26
- Birthplace
- White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, USA
- Death date
- 2020/02/24
- Awards
- Presidential Medal of Freedom, IEEE President's Award)
Biography
In 2015, President Barack Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to ninety-seven-year-old, Katherine Johnson for refusing “to be limited by society’s expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach.” While working as a technologist for the spacecraft controls branch of NASA in 1961, she calculated the path for astronaut Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 for America’s first human spaceflight. She would go on to later perform calculations for astronaut John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth, the first Moon landing, and the aborted Apollo 13 mission. She was also later involved in the early years of the space shuttle, and the Earth Resources satellite.
Early Life
Katherine Johnson was born Creola Katherine Coleman in the town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Her father, Joshua Coleman, was also a self-taught mathematician who took
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