![]() As a result of her accomplishments, women like Jeanette Epps, and more, credit her with paving the way for them to become astronauts, mathematicians, and more. Johnson was a trailblazer in STEM who inspired many people. Johnson also said in the WHRO interview, “If you attack the problem right, you’ll get the answer.” And added, “You lose your curiosity when you stop learning.” Her desire to keep improving, growing and learning continued to propel her forward. In several interviews, she shared that her approach to problem-solving was to learn how to attack it. Johnson enjoyed solving problems and often took opportunities to learn. From then on, she began attending briefings and eventually began working on aerospace trajectories. However, she was told, “the girls don’t usually go.” She then asked, “is there a law?” Since there wasn’t one, her boss let her go. ![]() She worked her way up and, as she shared in the 2011 WHRO interview, when the space program came along, she asked for permission to participate in the briefings for it. In June of 1953, she landed a job at Langley working on airplanes. When she initially applied to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA) Langley laboratory, she missed the hiring deadline for that year, but she was determined to work there. She didn’t let her race or gender hold her back from opportunities. When she found solutions for problems, she shared them which ultimately led to her being respected and trusted for her mathematical abilities.ģ. In school, she was able to skip multiple grades which led to her graduating from high school at the age of 14 and then college at age 18. She was a genius who didn’t hide her gift and educators took notice. Johnson was a teacher, mathematician, and researcher. She didn’t know what it meant to be a research mathematician but in time, that is what she pursued. As she encountered different people who saw her gift, like her college math teacher, she became enlightened and later decided that she wanted to work in aerospace. When it was discovered that young Katherine was good in math, she didn’t have an idea of what she could do with it as a career. ![]() Johnson shared in an interview with public media station WHRO that her dad only had a 6th-grade education, but he was good with numbers. ![]() We were all moved by the stories of triumph over adversity.Here are 5 ways that she used resilience to create her legacy: Katherine's experience of being the first, the only, or among the few who looked like her in a given professional setting was strikingly familiar to us. The 950 attendees at that session included students from 52 historically Black colleges and universities. The panelists' discussions provided insight into NASA's early days and the contributions of pioneering minority and female mathematicians and engineers, pieces of the early history and public face of the agency that had been missing until recently. Lee III, a former Langley climate scientist and “hidden figure” and aeronautical engineer Christine Darden. I attended a panel at the 2017 Emerging Researchers National Conference featuring Shetterly her father, Robert B. I never had the privilege of meeting Katherine, except in the pages of Shetterly's book, which provides incredible insight into the gifted and confident yet understated mathematician whom astronaut John Glenn was prepared to trust with his life. ![]()
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