NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson passed away today at the age of 101. Johnson was known for her work on historic missions and projects including America’s first human spaceflight (Alan Shepard—Freedom 7) and first orbital spaceflight (John Glenn—Friendship 7), syncing Project Apollo’s lunar module with the command module, the Space Shuttle program and the Earth Resources Satellite (Landsat). She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019 for her contributions.
After WWII when a phenomenal buildup of the flight testing mission at (then) Muroc AAF – now Edwards AFB – was occurring, NACA transferred a group of it’s female “computers” there to support the work. In 1972 when I showed up at Edwards AFB, some of them were still there and working prior to the digital revolution when computers routinely took over their work. I had the pleasure of working with a few of them reducing complex analog flight test data into usable format. All of those gals were called “computers” for a reason. We now better realize the formidable contribution they all made. What a wonderful memory of times now long gone.