Hidden no longer. 

Thanks to the book and movie, Hidden Figures, the name Katherine Johnson is forever immortalized. The famous NASA mathematician and trailblazer has died at the age of 101.

“The NASA family will never forget Katherine Johnson’s courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote on his Twitter. “Her story and her grace continue to inspire the world.”

“We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering, and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics,” NASA Stem Engagement tweeted. 

Mrs. Johnson was among several African American women responsible for America’s first space mission and moon landing. Johnson was part of NASA’s computer pool at the Langley’s Research Center in Virginia. She hand-computed the trajectory of the first manned launch with John Glenn and became the first woman to co-author a paper on the safety of orbital landings in 1960.  Johnson’s and the other accomplishments of black women at NASA went largely unrecognized for decades until the 2017 film release of, Hidden Figures, starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer (Dorthy Vaughan) and Janelle Monroe (Mary Jackson).

Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Johnson was one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools, according to her NASA biography. She was also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. 

Johnson retired from NASA in 1986. In 2017, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. In 2018, Mattel honored Johnson with a Barbie doll and NASA renamed one of their facilities after Johnson in 2019.

We are so glad Johnson received the recognition she deserved while she was still alive, as well as the other Hidden Figures who paved the way for black women in NASA and STEM.