“Over a decade before Neil Armstrong made “one small step for man,” Katherine Johnson was making giant leaps for all women. Despite the fact that Johnson was the “human computer” behind the calculations that were critical to launching the first American in space, sending the first American man to orbit the Earth, and landing the first human on the moon, her place in history remained largely unrecognized—until now. In 1953 she began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)’s West Area Computing unit, a group of African American women who manually performed complex mathematical calculations for the program’s engineers. The women, known……
Read More »