Katherine Johnson sits at her desk with a globe, or "Celestial Training Device." Credit: NASA
She calculated the trajectory of man’s first trip to the moon, and was such an accurate mathematician that John Glenn asked her to double-check NASA’s computers. To top it off, she did it all as a black woman in the 1950s and ’60s, when women at NASA were not even invited to meetings.
And you’ve probably never heard of her.
Meet Katherine Johnson, the African-American woman who earned the nickname “the human computer” at NASA during its space race golden age.
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