Born August 26, 1918 in White Sulfur Springs, WV and passed away February 24, 2020, Katherine Johnson from the start was as bright as can be. Due to this, she was accepted as one of three African American students to attend West Virginia State University, Katherine being the only female. Here she graduated with honors and a B.S. in mathematics and French. Her mentor was the famous PhD recipient W.W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to recieve a PhD in mathematics. After college. she found a job as a teacher at an African American public school in Virginia. The Start of Katherine's journey to becoming one of the most well known computer scientists to date, is when she took a job at NASA's National Advisory Committee For Aeronautics West Computing Groups, a group of many very intelligent African American women. Known as "Human Computers", their job was to analyze data and provide mathematical computations vital to NASA's Space Program. Katherine was then moved to the Space Task Program. In this group she helped launch the first man into orbit, without her the event wouldn't have been possible. She also was apart of the Mercury Projects where she verified the calculations for the computer during John Glenn's flight into space. Glenn specifically requested Johnson to verify the coordinates. This isn't the last of her though. In 1969, she did the calculations for the Apollo 11 mission which sent the first three men to the Moon. After working on the space shuttle program, she retired from NASA in 1986. For her Contributions, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a NASA Group Achievement Award.
