

For the first time, a wider swath of the world learned about Johnson and how she made a place for herself in American spaceflight. Johnson’s talent and contributions are well documented now, but for most of her life, her efforts went unrecognized-until Shetterly published her book in 2016, and the film it inspired became a blockbuster. Johnson, who died this morning at the age of 101, spent more than 30 years at NASA, where she provided the complex calculations for the country’s most important missions, from the first journey to the edge of space to the triumphant landing on the moon. She made it into the room, and well beyond that. Eventually the engineers relented, tired of saying no over and over again. There had been, in other cases one prohibited black people from using the same bathroom as white people.īut Johnson already ignored those laws at the office, and she kept asking about the meetings. “Is there a law against it?” she replied. “Girls don’t go to the meetings,” her male colleagues told her. “Why can’t I go to the editorial meetings?” Johnson asked the engineers, as Margot Lee Shetterly wrote in the book Hidden Figures. But she wasn’t allowed inside the room where any of it was discussed. Katherine Johnson’s job was to prepare the equations and charts for this work. Every day, engineers at the Langley laboratory, in Virginia, contemplated orbital mechanics, rocket propulsion, and the complicated art of leaving Earth-they needed to catch up with the Soviet Union. This title is intended for teens and adults.In 1958, not long after the pivotal launch of Sputnik, American engineers were preoccupied with spaceflight.
#KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA GENEALOGY PROFESSIONAL#
The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spygives an account of Baker's life and the many roles she played in her professional and personal life. Josephine: the dazzling life of Josephine Baker is a children's biography of Baker's life.

In addition to being an entertainer, she also helped the French Resistance as a spy during World War II. Read more about Bonnie’s tragic story in Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, for adults, or Bonnie and Clyde: A Biography, for teens.Ī singer and dancer, Baker is compared to Beyoncé on the show, giving an indication of her stardom and talent. Not all historical women are heroines – Bonnie Parker is definitely more infamous than heroic, for she and her partner Clyde Barrow ran a gang of outlaws that terrorized the central United States in the 1930s. Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World includes Johnson among its subjects. The film shares the account of African-American women mathematicians at NASA who helped put men on the moon in 1969, and Hidden Figures: the American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians who Helped Win the Space Race is the book it is based upon. Johnson is more well-known today, thanks to the recent film Hidden Figures. The adult book Warrior Woman tells the fictionalized story of this tough, no-nonsense chief of the Shawnee tribe as she leads her people’s resistance against the Virginians.

The Timeless team meets up with the Shawnee peace chief Nonhelema in 1754, near the beginning of the French and Indian War.
#KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA GENEALOGY SERIES#
In honor of Women’s History Month, we're using the time travel in this TV series to explore more about their featured women from history, including Nonhelema, Katherine Johnson, Bonnie Parker, and Josephine Baker. Each episode visits a different era of history, and features famous historical figures who unwittingly assist the narrative in different ways. This TV series mixes history with time travel as a present-day team chases bad guys through time using a prototype time machine. One of my recent “guilty pleasures” is the new NBC series Timeless.
