"Anything that could be counted, I did." //

Katherine Johnson, a trailblazing mathematician best known for her contributions to NASA's human spaceflight program and who gained fame later in life due to the movie Hidden Figures, died Monday. She was 101 years old.

"At NASA, we will never forget her courage and leadership and the milestones we could not have reached without her," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "We will continue building on her legacy and work tirelessly to increase opportunities for everyone who has something to contribute toward the ongoing work of raising the bar of human potential." //

Most notably, in 1962, she performed the critical calculations that put John Glenn into a safe orbit during the first orbital mission of a US astronaut. NASA engineers had run the calculations on electric computers, but when someone was needed to validate the calculations, Glenn and the rest of the space agency turned to Johnson. “If she says they’re good,” Johnson recalled the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go." //

NASA named a new building after her in 2016, the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility //

What an amazing lady - her work will live on for centuries, as we explore further out into the solar system. RIP Katherine
From another article, but appropriate-
Quote:

Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian:
“If we go back to the moon, or to Mars, we’ll be using her math.”