( Historic pictures show the hidden women of the space race.) “Katherine Johnson, the human computer, the third African-American woman to get a Ph.D., who helped NASA put an astronaut into orbit and then help put a man on the moon, inspires me with her pioneering legacy to break barriers and to challenge norms as a teacher and as a woman of color,” Gupta says.Īs seen in the 2016 Academy Award-nominated film Hidden Figures, Johnson was among a group of Black women described as “human computers” who worked at NASA, then called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, calculating space flight trajectories by hand. That legacy of inspiration lives on in Kavita Gupta, a chemistry teacher at Monta Vista High School, in Cupertino, California. Katherine's legacy of exploration, innovation and inspiration lives on, and we are in awe of her remarkable achievements." “Fifty years ago, the Apollo 11 astronauts were awarded with the medal, and we’re honored to recognize the mathematician whose precise calculations made those flights possible. "We are honored to present Katherine Johnson the Hubbard Medal, the National Geographic Society's highest recognition, for her extraordinary contributions in the fields of science and exploration,” National Geographic Society CEO Jill Tiefenthaler said this week. She is an awardee of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the 2020 recipient of the Hubbard Medal, National Geographic’s highest honor, recognizing a lifetime achievement in research, discovery, and exploration. Born in 1918, Katherine Johnson was one of the first Black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools before becoming a NASA mathematician, where she helped send astronauts into orbit around Earth and to the moon and back.
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