Johnson's autobiography, Reaching for the Moon, was written with a middle grade audience in mind, encouraging young readers to strive for their goals regardless of naysayers. Nonetheless, her life and work have served as an inspiration for many, and will continue to do so. As she told Shetterly during research interviews for Hidden Figures, “I was just doing my job." Johnson refused to be limited by society’s expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach,” but Johnson never felt like a pioneer. In 2015, when Barack Obama presented Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he said that “Katherine G. Hers quickly became a household name and an inspiration for women in STEM fields, especially women of color. Though characters based on other colleagues appeared in the film, including Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson (portrayed by Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe, respectively), by the time of the film's release in 2017, Johnson was the only "computer" still living of the cohort of women with whom she had worked. Johnson, the film's central character, was portrayed by Taraji P. Their work was highlighted in Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film of the same name. Despite the crucial nature of her calculations and her inimitable skill, her work, and that of other women of color working at NASA at the time, went largely unnoticed as the spotlight focused on their white, male counterparts. Johnson's work was instrumental to many of the most famous space flights in American history, from John Glenn's pioneering orbit to the Apollo 11 moon landing. We also hope they are inspired by her persistence, strength tenacity and fearlessness.NASA mathematician and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Katherine Johnson passed away this week at the age of 101. We assisted in researching the HBCUs that were so much a fond part of her experience, as well as background research on one of the professors who greatly influenced her.”Īsked what message they hope readers take away, Hylick and Moore said, “We hope readers will see how important education was to her and her family. We did some historical research to put her story in context of the times in which she lived. We found some handwritten notes and letters. Of course, we had our own memories of her stories. “We had a wealth of good detailed stories and information. Of the research they did to complete the book, Hylick and Moore said they drew from numerous interviews Johnson had done, both before and after the Hidden Figures film release. This book is more of a personal family story.” Of the numerous awards she received, Johnson writes, “If I’ve done anything in my life to deserve any of this, it is because I had great parents who taught me simple but powerful lessons that sustained me in the most challenging times.” They all completed high school and college at West Virginia State (College) University. Asked in an interview why it was important to share her life story in her own words, Johnson’s daughters Hylick and Moore said, “She really wanted to pay tribute to her parents, who had sacrificed so much to educate her and her siblings. Johnson began working on the book about a year before she passed away. Of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2017 from President Barack Obama, Johnson writes that it was “one of the greatest honors of my life,” though she wished that her fellow NASA coworkers, Dorothy Vaughan, who supervised the “West Computers,” the segregated section of Black women mathematicians at NASA’s Langley Research Center, and Eunice Smith and Mary Jackson, had lived long enough to enjoy similar public acclaim. And I felt blessed to be her,” she writes. It was enough for me that I knew when he needed ‘the girl’ to boost his confidence that he could entrust his life to the heavens and get him back home, I was that girl. Who knows? It didn’t matter to me then, and it doesn’t now. “Many have asked me over the years whether John Glenn ever knew my name. Of the results of her efforts, Johnson took pride in having played a key role. The computer had figured it out, but I was the error checker, the last stop.” So I quickly assembled my meager supplies and got busy on my calculator, working out every equation by hand for the trajectory of a mission that was scheduled to include three orbits. “This was a major assignment, but I had done this long before the computer made it seem simple. Of watching the Friendship 7 launch in February 1962, in which John Glenn had insisted that Johnson approve the calculations before the flight (instructing, “get the girl to check the numbers”), Johnson writes the task took a day and a half.
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