"Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, whose death at 101 was announced on Monday by NASA, calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history-making moonwalk, let it return to Earth."
The quality of work, done by hand, is just staggering when you think of the consequences that could have transpired if mistakes had been made.
According to Hidden Figures (which to the best of my knowledge is quite accurate in representing Katherine Johnson), she actually hand checked most if not every calculation performed by the digital computers and often found miscalculations due to programming errors.
It must be weird to go from being completely forgotten for your contributions to the moon landing to becoming famous, the main character in a major Hollywood movie, and have a building at NASA named after you.
My Dad and I watched 'Hidden Figures' a couple of weekends ago. Its such a great movie. To think that this one person was able to do that floored me.
I told my Dad how lucky we are to be born with various abilities that we then nurture and develop. The sky's the limit when we do the things we were "born" to do.
This lady's mind was really meant to doing such calculations. So good!
I'm not sure if she wanted that attention, but she deserved it. I'm sure, being 97 years old and now getting famous isn't that bad. I can't imagine people taking too many photographs and interviews of here.
It's a great movie. I read a bit about her afterwards. One cool thing is that some of the parts that I assumed were made up by Hollywood to heighten the drama (like Neil Armstrong say "I'm not launching unless she does the calculations") weren't fabricated. That actually happened
I think it's pretty unfortunate so many people, particularly women and people of color, have gone unrecognized for their accomplishments in their lifetime. It's somewhat heartening to me that she was, however late, recognized properly within her lifetime for her incredible contributions.
A few years ago, a friend of mine summarized Margaret Hamilton's contributions to computing; the post went pretty viral (it sat atop this very site), enough that some other people made copy-cat posts. A couple years later she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I don't think the two events were disconnected...
Rest in peace, and thanks for the inspiration of what a dedicated, hard working person can achieve. I'm glad she got to receive the recognition she deserved in her life.
Readit News
The quality of work, done by hand, is just staggering when you think of the consequences that could have transpired if mistakes had been made.
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See e.g. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680020624 for Gemini.
I told my Dad how lucky we are to be born with various abilities that we then nurture and develop. The sky's the limit when we do the things we were "born" to do.
This lady's mind was really meant to doing such calculations. So good!
I'm not sure if she wanted that attention, but she deserved it. I'm sure, being 97 years old and now getting famous isn't that bad. I can't imagine people taking too many photographs and interviews of here.
I tend to think the sky's the limit, and we all need good mentors. Check out "Stand and Deliver", another great movie, based on a real story.
https://theymadethat.com/people/4dm0q9/katherine-johnson
imo it's nice to have a visual of someone's work
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_58