(1918, White Sulfur Springs- 2020, Hampton)
Mathematics, computer scientist, physics
The only school for African Americans in her small town stopped at 8th elementary. To continue her education, her mother and siblings moved 120 km away. Upon graduation, achieved summa cum laude in French and mathematics, she learned that the national aviation advisory board, later known as NASA, was looking for female staff to work on the first computers. Their main job was to read data from aircraft black boxes. Johnson was temporarily assigned to help the men’s group. From there on she started an extraordinary career. Johnson was the one who calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and that, in 1969, of the Apollo 11 flying to the moon. In 2015 Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.
