Dang. I thought she’d live forever:
They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them.
Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday at a retirement home in Newport News, Va., 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.
A single error, she well knew, could have dire consequences for craft and crew. Her impeccable calculations had already helped plot the successful flight of Alan B. Shepard Jr., who became the first American in space when his Mercury spacecraft went aloft in 1961.
The next year, she likewise helped make it possible for John Glenn, in the Mercury vessel Friendship 7, to become the first American to orbit the Earth.
Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson’s 33 years in NASA’s Flight Research Division — the office from which the American space program sprang — and for decades afterward, almost no one knew her name.
Whenever someone tells me that women can’t do math, I gently remind them that the term “computer” used to literally mean a roomful of women doing math. Johnson was one of the brightest of the women NASA recruited to do calculations for the space program, a mathematical prodigy whose talent was so prodigious, she went from a computer pool to one the key figures in making sure our Mercury astronauts got home safely. John Glenn reportedly wouldn’t launch until Johnson had signed off on his trajectory.
Her work went unnoticed until the movie “Hidden Figures” a few years ago which suddenly made her a celebrity at 98. NASA named a facility after her and she received an honorary degree 75 years after dropping out of grad school. I do recommend the movie. It’s dramatized a bit, but it’s inspiring and fairly accurate. When it came out, a young lady in our area asked her mother, for her birthday, to organize free showings of the movies specifically for young girls. Businesses and girls’ organizations in the area organized, pooled money and gave out free tickets. The theaters had special showings just for them. My daughter loved it.
The NYT profile is very thorough as is CNN’s. Read through and be inspired by a remarkable American.
Ad Astra, Dr. Johnson.
The kind of person we should be idolizing as a hero all along, rather than 5 years before her passing.Report
I’ve never heard anyone say that women can’t do math. Anyone who thinks that, can’t do math – at least, doesn’t understand statistics. But women, as a group, consistently under-perform against men in math in standardized tests, are under-represented in mathematical fields, and account for only one of the 59 winners of the Fields Medal. I would encourage any female who was interested and capable in a mathematical field to pursue it, but I wouldn’t ever expect to see the gender gap disappear.Report
Whenever someone tells me that women can’t do math
How often does this happen? I’ve literally never heard anyone say this.Report
you need to get out more. As Pinky notes, women are woefully underrepresented in many mathematical and science fields – and women of color even more critically so. Even in the professional science circle I frequent (as an oceanographer) there is still an anti-woman bias in publication, leadership and career advancement, to say nothing of an entrenched belief that women really aren’t serious about science generally, and heavily computational science at that, if they want to have families and real lives. Its such a prevalent problem that studies of the impacts have appeared recently in peer reviewed journals, and most of the major science and math professional societies have devoted lengthy sessions at professional meetings to addressing this topic for several years now.Report
I’m aware that women are underrepresented in certain fields. I’m also aware that feminists really want this to be due to misogyny, despite the evidence pointing to lack of interest being the main cause. But what I said was that I’ve never heard anyone say that women can’t do math. Sounds like you have plenty of examples to point to. Are there any you can link to, or is it a whisper campaign?
I’m on my twentieth year in the software industry, which, according to The Narrative, is the Dudeiest, Broiest, Most Misogynistic Industry There Is™, so I shouldn’t have to get out to see it. I have a front-row seat to the Patriarchy five days a week, and I’ve never once heard that women can’t do math, or that they can’t program computers. It would be rather silly to claim the latter, given the counterexamples down the hall.Report
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/choke/201109/why-pretty-girls-can-t-do-math
https://jezebel.com/british-paper-says-women-just-cant-do-math-362937
https://www.pewresearch.org/2006/08/30/women-cant-do-mathor-can-they/
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/math-women/506417/
And that’s just what I could easily grab. Like I said – many STEM related professional societies are working on it. But we have a LONG way to go.Report
None of these articles features people saying that women can’t do math. Some discuss possible unconscious bias, which by definition is something that people don’t say. Some complain about the gender gap and discuss ways to reduce or end it. The Psychology Today and Daily Mail (via Jezebel) articles report on evidence of women doing worse at math.Report
Seen on FB today:
Katherine Johnson was a badass mathematician until the very end, waiting until she was 101, so she could die in her prime.Report
We need a like button.Report
Well done!Report