African-American Moon Race pioneer Katherine Johnson dies

Text by: Marie Normand Follow

Thanks to her calculations and her equations, she allowed the United States to conquer the Moon. African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson died at the age of 101.

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"She was a hero of America, a pioneer whose legacy will never be forgotten, " NASA boss Jim Bridenstine said on Twitter on Monday. The American space agency also pays a vibrant tribute to its mathematician in a video clip . However, Katherine Johnson has long remained in the shadows.

Born in 1918 in White Sulfur Springs, in the northeast of the United States, Katherine Johnson is a brilliant student. She graduated in mathematics and French in 1937, before being selected two years later as one of the first three black students to take courses at the State University of West Virginia. However, she left after a year to start a family and raise her three daughters.

Her career did not start until 1953. At 35, Katherine Johnson was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the ancestor of Nasa, to control, through her calculations, the work of her superiors. The United States is still segregated. Office, washroom, cafeteria: Katherine Johnson works away from her white colleagues. It was only when NASA was created in 1958 that black and white mathematicians began to work in the same room.

An indispensable woman

Very quickly, his work was noticed. It even becomes essential, as recalled by his biography on the NASA website. In 1962, astronaut John Glenn refused to embark on the very first American flight in orbit around the Earth until " this girl ", as he called it, had checked the trajectory calculations made by a computer. Katherine Johnson will then participate in all of NASA's advances for three decades. The mathematician believes that " her greatest contribution to the conquest of space " remains the calculation of the trajectory of Apollo 11, in 1969. It is this flight that will lead the first men to the moon. " They asked her for the moon, she gave them the moon, " the New York Times wrote on Monday.

They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them https://t.co/12HmTWHH16

These feats of arms will however remain unknown to the general public for a long time long after his retirement taken in 1986. Katherine Johnson was 97 years old when Barack Obama awarded him, in 2015, the Presidential Medal of Liberty, one of the highest civil distinctions in the world. country.

The following year, the film The Shadow Figures , adapted from the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, completed its reputation. He tells his story and more broadly that of all those African-American women who played a key, but little-known role in the American space conquest.

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