As it happens, SUNY Farmingdale has an aerospace program. Katherine’s parents were determined their four children would complete college. The school gives at least one honorary doctorate a year, searching nationally for deserving recipients who will inspire students. Katherine Coleman was born on August 26, 1918, in West Virginia. You just had to talk to her for a few minutes, explain something to her, and she caught on.''ĭespite her surprise at the recent award, Johnson was precisely the kind of scientist SUNY Farmingdale officials wanted to honor. ''She just was able to understand anything. Katherine Johnson grew up the youngest of four siblings under her parents Joshua and Joylette Coleman (Katherine Johnson started her life off bright as her parents saw her as naturally gifted. ''What made her so good to work with was she was bright, pleasant, understood what you were talking about, was very efficient,'' Schy said. Johnson was especially good at adapting to the new requirements. The researchers came up with their own methods as they went along.Īl Schy, Johnson's boss for almost 20 years, said all the scientists in that branch had to shift quickly from airplane problems to space problems. Her father, Joshua Coleman, had farmed and worked as a. There was no such thing as a textbook on celestial mechanics, she said. Katherine Johnson with an adding machine and a ‘celestial training device’ at her desk at Nasa’s Langley research centre in 1962.
''We started from scratch,'' Johnson said. Her parents were Joshua and Joylette Coleman. But Johnson and the other researchers were in uncharted territory as they calculated the location of astronauts in relation to Earth. As a well known mathematician for NASA, Katherine Johnson showed Americans that African American women are. She stayed an extra year to help with plans for the space station.Īt the heart of her work was the basic geometry that children learn in school. By the time she retired from NASA Langley Research Center in 1986, Johnson had helped make calculations that would send space ships into orbit and men to the moon.
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