‘Hidden Figures’ mathematician Katherine Johnson, who broke barriers at NASA, dies at 101

Katherine Johnson, the venerated NASA mathematician who was depicted in the film “Hidden Figures,” died Monday, NASA said. She was 101.

“Ms. Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space,”  NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.

“At NASA we will never forget her courage and leadership and the milestones we could not have reached without her.”

Her groundbreaking contributions to bring Americans in space were plenty: Johnson worked on the first NASA mission in 1961 to carry an American, Alan Shepard, into space. In 1962, she verified computer calculations that plotted John Glenn’s orbits around Earth.

Per NASA, Glenn entrusted Johnson to calculate the trajectories by hand more than the state-of-the-art computers available at the time, which were often prone to breaking down.

Over the course of her 33-year career, Johnson also contributed to Apollo missions, helped the agency transition to computers and went on to win five NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement awards. She retired in 1986.

“I loved going to work every single day,” she told NASA.

Before she began her stint at NASA, she taught at black public schools in Virginia. In her later years, she continued working with students – encouraging them to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, Johnson made history, per NASA, by becoming the first black woman to integrate the graduate schools at West Virginia University.