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They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them. With little more than a pencil, a rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 103, worked out the exact track that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history—making moonwalk, let it come back to Earth.
Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson’s 33 years in NASA and for a period of ten years afterwards, almost no one knew her name.
Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, Mrs. Johnson showed great talent for numbers at an early age which made her ahead several grades in school. By 13, she went to the high school. At 18, she entered the college and graduated with highest grades in 1937.
Mrs. Johnson was one of several hundred strictly educated, with strong ability yet largely unknown women who, well before the modern feminist movement(女权运动), worked as NASA mathematicians. But it was not only her sex that kept her long unimportant. For some years at midcentury, the black women were influenced by a double segregation(隔离): They were kept separate from the much large group of white women who in turn were segregated from the agency’s male mathematicians and engineers.
Mrs. Johnson broke barriers(屏障) at NASA. In old age, Mrs. Johnson became the most celebrated of black women who served as mathematicians for the space agency. Their story was told in the 2016 Hollywood film Hidden Figures, which was nominated for three Oscars, including best picture.
In 2017, NASA named a building after her. That year, the Washington Post described her as “the most high-profile of the computers”—“computers” being the term at first used to describe Mrs. Johnson and her workmates, much as “typewriters” were used in the 19th century to represent professional typists.
“She helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space,” NASA’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said in a statement, “even as she made huge steps that also opened doors for women and people of colour to explore space.”
As Mrs. Johnson herself liked saying, her term at Langley—from 1953 until her retirement in 1986—was “a time when computers wore skirts.”
Katherine Johnson—A great NASA mathematician | |
| Basic information | ● Mrs. Johnson was born in 1918 in West Virginia and died in 2021. ● She started school earlier than others because of her ● She got the ● She worked for NASA for 33 years, but was |
| Cause of being | ● Mrs. Johnson was not only female but also |
| Contributions | ● She worked out the exact track that let Apollo 11 land on the moon and ● As the most famous black woman at NASA, she ● She helped women and people of colour have a |
| Evaluation(评价) | ● Mrs. Johnson was considered as one of the most famous black women for the space agency. ● NASA thought highly of her and decided that a building was ● The Washington Post called her and her team “computers”, which |
同类型试题
y = sin x， x∈R， y∈[–1，1]，周期为2π，函数图像以 x = (π/2) + kπ 为对称轴
y = arcsin x， x∈[–1，1]， y∈[–π/2，π/2]
sin x = 0 ←→ arcsin x = 0
sin x = 1/2 ←→ arcsin x = π/6
sin x = √2/2 ←→ arcsin x = π/4
sin x = 1 ←→ arcsin x = π/2
y = sin x， x∈R， y∈[–1，1]，周期为2π，函数图像以 x = (π/2) + kπ 为对称轴
y = arcsin x， x∈[–1，1]， y∈[–π/2，π/2]
sin x = 0 ←→ arcsin x = 0
sin x = 1/2 ←→ arcsin x = π/6
sin x = √2/2 ←→ arcsin x = π/4
sin x = 1 ←→ arcsin x = π/2
