Katherine Johnson, whose calculations enabled the first moonwalk, dies at 101
Katherine Johnson at NASA Langley Research Center in 1980. (NASA/)NASA mathematician and trailblazer Katherine Johnson has died at 101 years old. Johnson was among the first black women to work at the space agency as well as at its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Among her many achievements, Johnson computed the flight path that Neil Armstrong and his fellow Apollo 11 crew members would take to make their historic trip to the moon and back.Johnson was coincidentally born on Women’s Equality Day in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. She was “simply fascinated by numbers,” starting at an early age, according to NASA. Her local school system only provided education for black students until eighth grade, so Johnson’s family moved 120 miles away to enroll her in high school. She then skipped enough grades to graduate college at 18 years old.After years as a teacher, in her mid-30s, she...