{"id":44220,"date":"2015-11-26T03:19:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T03:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44220"},"modified":"2015-11-26T03:20:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T03:20:47","slug":"the-black-female-mathematicians-who-sent-astronauts-to-space%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44220","title":{"rendered":"The Black Female Mathematicians Who Sent Astronauts to Space\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Black Female Mathematicians Who Sent Astronauts to Space<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Mental Floss<\/a>
\n2015-11-24<\/p>\n

A. K. Whitney<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nKatherine Johnson<\/a> at NASA Langley Research Center<\/a> in 1971. (Source NASA)<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Today, November 24, President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom<\/a>, considered the nation\u2019s highest civilian honor<\/a>, to 17 men and women. Among them is 97-year-old retired African-American NASA<\/a> mathematician Katherine G. Johnson<\/a>, selected for her contributions to the space program, starting with the Mercury missions<\/a> in the \u201850s and early \u201860s, through the Apollo moon missions<\/a> in the late \u201960s and early \u201870s, and ending with the space shuttle missions in the mid ’80s. Among other things, she calculated the trajectories of America’s first manned mission into orbit<\/a> and the first Moon landing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Awarding Johnson this well-deserved honor doesn’t just shine a spotlight on a single black female STEM<\/a> pioneer. It also illuminates an obscure but important piece of history. Johnson was just one of dozens of mathematically talented black women recruited to work as \u201chuman computers<\/a>\u201d at the Langley Memorial Research Laboratory<\/a> in the \u201840s and \u201850s.<\/p>\n

They were so named because before machines came along, they crunched the numbers necessary for figuring out everything from wind tunnel resistance to rocket trajectories to safe reentry<\/a> angles.<\/p>\n

In fact, all of Langley\u2019s hundreds of \u201chuman computers,\u201d whether black or white, were women. It was an era when, as Johnson put it, \u201cthe computer wore a skirt.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Black Female Mathematicians Who Sent Astronauts to Space Mental Floss 2015-11-24 A. K. Whitney Katherine Johnson at NASA Langley Research Center in 1971. (Source NASA) Today, November 24, President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom, considered the nation\u2019s highest civilian honor, to 17 men and women. Among them is 97-year-old retired African-American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,20,25],"tags":[22031,19570,22016,19571,22027,22030,22026,19572,22032,19573,22025],"class_list":["post-44220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-a-k-whitney","tag-katherine-coleman-goble-johnson","tag-katherine-g-johnson","tag-katherine-johnson","tag-langley-research-center","tag-mental-floss","tag-naca","tag-nasa","tag-national-advisory-committee-for-aeronautics","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-presidential-medal-of-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44220"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44222,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44220\/revisions\/44222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}