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Katherine Johnson dead at age 102
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"In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, DC, Cape Canaveral, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, from blast off to splashdown, but the 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 pre-flight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Katherine 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.” Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talks about the calculations that helped sync Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after thirty-three years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she says. In 2015, at age 97, Katherine Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor."


https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography


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Pretty impressive !

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/computational-facility-named-in-tribute-to-nasa-langley-math-master-katherine-johnson

A smiling Katherine Johnson returned Thursday to the NASA center where, for decades, she used her mathematical smarts to help shape history.

This time she was in the spotlight, not behind a desk making complex calculations and searching for the truth in numbers.

Katherine Johnson smiles during May 5, 2016, ceremony.
Katherine Johnson worked at NASA's Langley Research Center from 1953 to 1986. Since her retirement, she's been a strong advocate for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.
Credits: NASA/David C. Bowman
The mathematician and 97-year-old Newport News resident visited NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to attend a ceremony where a $30 million, 40,000-square-foot Computational Research Facility was named in her honor.

As part of the event, Johnson also received a Silver Snoopy award from Leland Melvin, an astronaut and former NASA associate administrator for education. Often called the astronaut’s award, the Silver Snoopy goes to people who have made outstanding contributions to flight safety and mission success.

“I do thank you so much for your attention, for your kindness, but more than that, I’m so happy to see you giving more recognition to women for the work that they have done,” Johnson said. “I have always done my best … At the time it was just another day’s work.”

Johnson needn’t have been modest. She’s a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner whose sharp mind gave NASA an edge in mankind’s quest to explore space.

She first made her mark at a time when women and African-Americans were regularly marginalized.

Working at Langley from 1953 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson made a long list of critical contributions. She calculated the trajectory of the 1961 flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Thursday’s ceremony was held on the 55th anniversary of that historic flight.

Johnson is also credited for verifying the calculations made by early electronic computers of John Glenn’s 1962 launch to orbit and the 1969 Apollo 11 trajectory to the moon.

The Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility is currently under construction.
The Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility currently under construction will allow NASA Langley to replace and consolidate a number of aging data centers and will enhance the center's computational strength.
Credits: NASA
Margot Lee Shetterly, author of a forthcoming book about Johnson and other women whose calculations were integral to America’s space program, gave the keynote address at Thursday’s event.

Her book, “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped NASA and the United States Win the Space Race,” is scheduled to be published in September by William Morrow.

Shetterly noted that Johnson eagerly credits others who share her passion for what’s now called STEM, short for science, technology, engineering and math.

Katherine Johnson. What class. Put new meaning to being the best you can be. Some candles just can't be blown out.

What an amazing woman. Someday when we have spacefaring vessels on the order of what you see on Star Trek, one will be named for her. The "USS Katherine Johnson" has a nice ring to it!

Great book. Great movie.

Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Goble Johnson, mathematician
Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, mathematician and supervisor
Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson, mathematician and engineer

This is the trailer https://youtu.be/5wfrDhgUMGI

You might be able to stream it for free: https://fxnow.fxnetworks.com/movies-and-specials/hidden-figures

That was a very good film.

¿ did she died OPie ? ~

Yes, zill - she's dayud. You need a hug, honeypie?

I'm sure Katherine Johnson was a nice lady and fairly smart as well. But the pragmatist in me has to wonder why she worked all those years for outer space and not for this planet? It seems like such a waste in talent. I guess it could be argued that the billions spent on the space program and all the great discoveries of rocks from the moon was money well spent. Now we know it aint made of green cheese. And then Obama fawning over her, that's just great too. Well I'm sure she was a fine women and was a brave pioneer in opening up stem fields to a demographic who just can't wait to jump head first into it. But for some reason....they haven't.

It never was about collecting moon rocks. It was the greatest victory of the cold war. Catching up to, then surpassing the Russians in the space race and proving American superiority and dominance in military technology. Apollo-Soyuz was to show the Russians just how much ability that we had and they didn't.

Not only was she the first black woman in her field to work at NASA, SHE WAS THE FIRST WOMAN TO WORK IN HER FIELD AT NASA. She talks about opening doors for WOMEN! And, yeah. We have these things called "astronauts" and some of them are what? Women. And what else? Some are women of color.

OMG, MacRom. READ about her and the space program instead of whinging about Obama and all that tripe.

Lord



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2020 11:58AM by Beth.

Obama didn't fawn over her, he gave her an award that she should have received decades ago. Here's the obit from my friend John Byers' Dad who passed away 5 years ago.

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/John-Jack-Byers-9852869.php

Jack received the MoF from Nixon. Remember in the movie, "Apollo 13", where they locked a bunch of engineers is a room with only the materials they had aboard the Odyssey and the LEM, the Aquarius, to clean the CO2? Jack was one of those guys. He also was awarded the Silver Snoopy from our neighbor, astronaut Alan Bean for fixing his SkyLab. Jack also worked with Von Braun. He would be one of the first to tell you that he wouldn't have received those awards if he'd been a Black female. Hell, he wouldn't have been in his position if he were a Black female. He also worked with another pioneering woman, another neighbor, Poppy Northcutt. The first woman allowed in Mission Control. If Poppy were Black, that wouldn't have happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Northcutt

Bottom line, if it weren't for the Space program (collecting moon rocks) and men and women like K. Johnson and Poppy, you might be speaking Russian right now.

Beth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We have these things
> called "astronauts" and some of them are what?
> Women. And what else? Some are women of color.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_spacefarers

Just to put this in context:

* Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space - 1961
* John Glenn was the first American in orbit - 1962
* Valentina Tereshkova (USSR) was the first woman in space - 1963
* Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (Cuban) first black man, first Latino - 1980
* Sally Ride was the first American woman in space - 1983
* Guion Bluford - first African American man - 1983
* Mae Jemison was the first African American woman in space - 1992

So NASA took twenty years to put a woman into space after the first, and nearly another thirty to put an African American woman into space.

The record for Latinos and Asians isn't any better with NASA. No firsts.

* Phạm Tuân (Vietnamese) - first Asian in space - 1980
* Ellison Onizuka - first Asian American man in space - 1985
* Rodolfo Neri Vela (Mexico) first Latino in space on American spacecraft - 1985 (five years after the Cuban)
* Sidney M. Gutierrez - first US born Latino in space 1991
* Ellen Ochoa - first Hispanic American woman in space - 1993

But hey Katharine Johnson!

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But for some
> reason....they haven't.

I know why.

And working for this planet instead of one near Kolob? Sounds like such small potatoes dontcha think?

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm sure Katherine Johnson was a nice lady and
> fairly smart as well.

"fairly smart"? That's kind of a put-down, in view of Ms. Johnson's demonstrated abilities and achievements. Was it meant to be? A put-down that is.

As "anybody" stated above:

"Working at Langley from 1953 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson made a long list of critical contributions. She calculated the trajectory of the 1961 flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Thursday’s ceremony was held on the 55th anniversary of that historic flight."

"Johnson is also credited for verifying the calculations made by early electronic computers of John Glenn’s 1962 launch to orbit and the 1969 Apollo 11 trajectory to the moon."

I can just about pass a high school math quiz and manage not to overdose a patient with their IV meds. I greatly respect the mathematical ability of people who can find square roots and change miles into kilometres. Ms. Johnson calculated trajectories and verified computer calculations that got men to the moon! That gets an A+ in Math for life, in my book.


>But the pragmatist in me has
> to wonder why she worked all those years for outer
> space and not for this planet?

Different strokes for different folks? She was an integral part of a pioneering mission. That is a massive achievement in itself. Maybe too what is learned in outer space will help this planet immeasurably. The calculation methods used to achieve their goals in travelling where no (wo)man has gone before can be translated into use by other technologies and fields (such as medicine).


> And then Obama fawning over her,

This is an unfortunate characterization of the Medal of Freedom Award which is meant to signify singular achievements of outstanding contributors. Do you always think of such an award as "fawning" or just when it's a woman, or only when it's a woman of colour?


> I'm sure she was a
> fine women and was a brave pioneer in opening up
> stem fields to a demographic who just can't wait
> to jump head first into it. But for some
> reason....they haven't.

"A demographic" *has* "jump[ed] head first into it". More females than ever before are enrolled in STEM fields and go on to work in such areas.


In addition to all the above, as "someone" also states above"

"She first made her mark at a time when women and African-Americans were regularly marginalized."

The import of these facts cannot be over-emphasized. She forged new and tough ground as surely as did the early astronauts.


Why so negative, Maca? Because it's a woman? A black woman? You don't like Obama? Don't pioneers in any field, in all demographics, deserve recognition and thanks?

I think the answer is a resounding YES.

>>But the pragmatist in me has to wonder why she worked all those years for outer space and not for this planet?

It really amazes me that some of your direct ancestors got off their butts and crossed a very large ocean in search of what they hoped would be a better life. Perhaps they should have stayed at home? Because that would have been a lot safer, right?

People who are exploring space are the new pioneers.

There is a scene in the movie, "The Martian" (from what I've read, all of the plot points can all be justified by science and technology,) where the lead character Mark Watney puzzles out whether he meets the definition of a settler/pioneer/Martian immigrant. He weighs the evidence and concludes that he does (I believe that his efforts to be self-sufficient and to farm his own food were major factors in his thinking.)

Efforts in pioneering are often difficult and result in disaster. Think of Jamestown. Think of the Mayflower settlers, so many of whom were lost in the first winter. Think of the Mormon pioneers. I think pioneers are a different breed. They are willing to take a huge risk.

Katherine Johnson was a huge part of our pioneering efforts into space. If we one day succeed, as I think we will, she will be a big part of the reason why that happens.

Feel free to sit back and enjoy the show!

Are you working to improve the planet?

BTW, macaRomney, all those equations governing gravity and acceleration and all that: quadratics. Plus a dose of differential equations (aka diffy-ques).

NASA basically paid for the development of the semiconductor industry. There was no way computers, then room size behemoths, could be sent into space. Individual transistors were better, but still too heavy. Integrated circuits - those were small enough to be sent into space.

We basically went to the moon on slide rules and glorified mechanical adding machines. I wrote the same kind of software 15 years later on real computers, though even they would be considered pretty primitive today. That people like Katherine Johnson got us to the moon with slide rules to this day still astonishes me.

And if macaRomney thinks going to the moon was a waste of money, at least he concedes that we went to the moon. I'll take that as a win!

The other things we got from the space race, besides moon rocks and integrated circuits:
the internet, communications satellites, GPS, weather satellites, mylar, MREs, and that Mormon food storage staple, TANG.

When I saw the movie Hidden Figures, I poked the people I was with when the computer was being installed, and said "that's an IBM 7090." Nailed it. I cut my teeth on an IBM 360 (it could do fixed point accounting software or floating point engineering calculations, the first computer that could go in "all directions", hence the name), but there was also an old IBM 650 in the Jesse Knight Building at BYU, and a 7030 STRETCH ( close relative of the 7090) over at the Eyring Engineering Building.

Ah, memories

"The other things we got from the space race, besides moon rocks and integrated circuits:
the internet, communications satellites, GPS, weather satellites, mylar, MREs, and that Mormon food storage staple, TANG."

Nope, not Tang (or velcro, though NASA used it for many practical applications.)They did invent the "dustbuster", LASIK, many solar energy breakthroughs, Memory foam and believe it or not, the Bowflex.

>>There was no way computers, then room size behemoths, could be sent into space.

You brought up a memory. In the mid-70s, I used to visit my engineer brother, who was doing graduate work at MIT. He was a Graduate Assistant and had his own office there. I loved to wander the halls, which a teenager could freely do back then. I would see chalkboards full of equations similar to what you could see in the movie, "Hidden Figures." I would tour rooms full of intricate models. I knew that big things were happening there.

One day I followed him into the "computer room." All of the walls of this room were lined with mainframe computers. Each mainframe was larger than a good-sized refrigerator -- big rectangular boxes. There was one printer in the entire room which was used to print out the computers' output, probably a dot-matrix.

My brother later told me that the average personal computer nowadays has far more "juice" than that room full of mainframe computers had back then.

You're right. My Dad was an Shell Oil exec in Houston. My first year in college (UofH)I lived at home. He got me a job in their Oilfield exploration department. I had 8 am college classes. My job was to get to Two Shell Plaza at 5 am, no one was there but me and the lobby security guards, and pull off the night runs and put them in the proper boxes for them to grab when they got in the office.I took the runs off and left at 7 am, and then returned at 3 pm for another 3 hours. They were Dot Matrix printers, but about 3 feet wide plotting paper. Their programs were written and given to the keypunch room, a pool of about 20 women that punched cards for the computer runs. I learned some basic stuff. It took about 80 punch cards to print "Happy Birthday Joan" on a printout about 6 feet long. The mainframe room was kept about 50-55 degrees. The floor was sectionally removable with chillers underneath. Our old neighbor, Randy Stone was the director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (later Johnson Spacecraft Center). He said that we had more computing power in our Blackberry than they had in both Mission Control and the Apollo vehicles combined. Crazy.