Name : Katherine Coleman Goble

Birthdate : August 26, 1918 (age 99)

Field of science : Aeronautics

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson is born on August 26, 1918 in West Virginia.
She was the daughter of farmer and handyman Joshua Johnson and teacher Joylette
Coleman. Katherine is the youngest sibling among the four children. Finished the 8th
grade at the age of 10 and attended the West Virginia State College which she
graduated as summa cum laude at the age of 18 with the degrees in mathematics and
French. Beginning of late 1930s, Katherine began teaching math and French at schools
in Virginia and West Virginia. And in 1939, Katherine married James Francis Goble and
had 3 daughters. In 1952, Katherine learned about the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring for African-American women to serve as ‘computers’,
Katherine applied and eventually got in. After two weeks she was transferred to
another division where she take her ways to success. In 1958, Katherine was one of the
person in charged in NASA to let human into space and back. Johnson’s contributions
in launching spaceships and human to space and back was helpful in ensuring for it to
comeback safely. Johnson helped in developing Space Shuttle program and Earth
Sources Satellite, until she retired in 1986.

Some awards Katherine Johnson received through her works are ‘1967 NASA
Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft’, ‘Operation Team Award’, ‘National Technical Association’s
Mathematician of the Year 1997’, Had 4 honorary degrees. In November 2015, received
the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former president Barrack Obama. And in
September 2017, NASA honored Johnson naming a research lab after her.