Katherine Johnson in 2015.Photo: Shutterstock
Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician whose trailblazing contributions to the space agency during the Space Race got the silver screen treatment in the filmHidden Figures, has died, NASA announced Monday. She was 101.
Johnson played a pivotal role in many of NASA’s first space missions — she did trajectory analysis for America’s first human spaceflight in 1961, and was also the first woman in the Flight Research Division to get credit as an author of a research report one year earlier, according to her NASAbiography.
“’If [Katherine] says they’re good, then I’m ready to go,’” Johnson recalled Glenn saying, according to her biography.
Her hard work was highlighted inHidden Figures, a best-selling book that was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe in 2016.
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Henson, 49, paid tribute to Johnson onInstagram, calling her a “QUEEN” and thanking her for sharing her “intelligence, poise, grace and beauty with the world.”
“Because of your hard work little girls EVERYWHERE can dream as big as the MOON!!!” she wrote. “Your legacy will live on FOREVER AND EVER!!! You ran so we could fly!!! I will forever be honored to have been apart of bringing your story to life. You/your story was hidden thank GOD you are #hiddennomore. God bless your beautiful family. I am so honored to have sat and broke bread with you all.”
She was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and went on to study at West Virginia State College, where she was the first African-American woman todesegregate the graduate school.
Johnson, née Coleman, worked for years as a teacher before taking a job with NASA in 1953, where she was nicknamed the “human computer.”
“I like to learn,” she told PEOPLE in 2016. “That’s an art and a science. I’m always interested in learning something new.”
Before retiring from NASA in 1986, Johnson coauthored 26 research reports, and also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite, according to the agency.
Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from PresidentBarack Obamain 2015.
RELATED VIDEO: Former NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson Makes PEOPLE’s List of 25 Women Changing the World
She married her second husband James Johnson, an Army artillery officer, in 1959, according to theWashington Post, and was a mother to three daughters: Constance, who died in2010, Joylette and Katherine.
“I will always be grateful for her,” her daughter Katherine told PEOPLE in 2016 of the mother she considered a role model.
source: people.com
