-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 1
/
Copy pathFCC Katherine Johnson.html
184 lines (174 loc) · 14.1 KB
/
FCC Katherine Johnson.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="fr">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>FCC Katherine Johnson</title>
<style type="text/css">
body{
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
line-height: 1.8;
color: #000000;
background-color: #000000;
}
.bg-1{
background-color: #5353c6;
color: #000000;
font-family: Lobster;
}
.bg-2{
background-color: #4040bf;
color: #000000;
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
}
.bg-3{
background-color: #3939ac;
color: #000000;
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
}
.bg-4{
background-color: #333399;
color: #000000;
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
}
.bg-5{
background-color: #2d2d86;
color: #000000;
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
text-align: left;
}
.bg-6{
background-color: #262673;
color: #000000;
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
text-align: center;
}
.bg-7{
background-color: #202060;
color: #000000;
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
text-align: center;
}
.bg-8{
background-color: #7979d2;
color: #000000;
font-family: Aref+Ruqaa;
}
a:visited {
color:#5900b3; background-color:transparent; text-decoration:none
}
</style>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Aref+Ruqaa|Lobster" rel="stylesheet">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body>
<!-- First Container -->
<div class="container bg-1 text-center">
<div class="jumbotron">
<h1 class="text-primary text-center">Katherine Johnson</h1>
<img src="http://m.blog.hu/mo/monsooninfo/image/katherine-johnson_annie_leibovitz.jpg" class="img-responsive img-square margin" style="display: inline" alt="responsive image" width="500" height="500"/>
<footer>
<cite title="Source Title">Photo Credit: Vanity Fair</cite>
</footer>
<h5>NASA Mathematician, 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient, Computerized Navigator for Apollo 11</h5>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Second Container -->
<div class="container bg-2 text-center">
<div class="jumbotron">
<h3 class="margin">Math Prodigy and the Space System</h3>
<p>Built in 1917 the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a research center headquartered in Langley Virginia. The agency renamed itself the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) in 1958 as space missions gained speed. Before the use of electronic computers, NACA used “human computers” also know as “West computers”, “black computers”, or “computers who wore skirts”. Few jobs existed for African-Americans until 1941 when A. Philip Randolph proposed a march on Washington to draw attention to racial discrimination. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 to prevent the threat of over 100,000 swarming the Capitol. The order banned all federal agencies, unions, and companies in war related work from racial discriminatory employment. It was in 1953, a year after Katherine and her relocated, that she was contracted as a mathematician for the Langley Research Center at NACA.</p>
<p>Katherine Coleman was born on August 29, 1918 to Joylette and Joshua Coleman in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Her mother was a teacher and her father was farmer and worked extra jobs as a janitor. At a young age, Katherine was insatiably curious and showed many signs of being a math prodigy. She counted everything she did, everywhere she went and asked many questions. She believes she got her love of numbers from her father. Her learning aptitude was incredibly high that she was skipped from second grade to fifth grade.</p>
<p>Her father quit school at the sixth grade, but felt education was extremely important for Katherine and her siblings. Since the local schools did not offer classes beyond the eighth grade for African-Americans, Katherine and her siblings were enrolled at a school 125 miles away. In high school, took math classes from William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor. He was the third African-American to receive a Ph. D in mathematics. In 1933, at just 15 years old, Katherine started college at West Virginia State University. She received a full academic scholarship that also covered room and board. Katherine made such great strides with the course that Claytor had to create advanced math classes just for her. He told Katherine she would make a good research mathematician. She took his words to heart and took every available math course including analytic geometry. </p>
<p>In 1937, she graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Science in mathematics and French. Shortly afterwards, she followed in her mother's footsteps and became a teacher. She took her first job in Marion, VA. She said this is where she had her first experience with racism, as racism wasn't as blatant in West Virginia. Kathrine married James Goble in 1939 and had three daughters, Constance, Joylette, and Kathy. She resigned from her teaching positions, but was invited back in 1940 for the graduate program. She thought the college might have been trying to avoid a segregation lawsuit. She was one of the first African-Americans to enroll, but had to quit when her husband became ill. She returned to teaching to support the family. </p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Third Container -->
<div class="container bg-3 text-center">
<div class="jumbotron">
<img src="http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-050516g-lg.jpg"
class="img-responsive img-square margin" style="display: inline" alt="responsive image" width="500" height="500"/><footer>
<cite title="Source Title">Photo Credit: Collect Space via NASA</cite>
</footer>
<h3>A New Beginning</h3>
<p>It was in the summer of 1952 when Katherine learned from her sister and brother-in-law about the opportunities opening for African-American women in the mathematics department at the nearby research facility. After a long discussion between Katherine and her husband, they family relocated in preparation for Katherine's new career. In June of 1953, nearly one to the date from the day she heard of the opportunities at the research facility, Katherine was now working in a pool of women performing math calculations for NACA. Katherine was placed in the West Area, the only place that “colored-girls” were allowed to work. Her main objective was to read the data from the black boxes of plane and carry out other mathematical tasks. Her boss was Dorothy Vaughan, another mathematician who joined the West Area 10 prior to Katherine and had painstakingly risen to the head of the department. Both Katherine and Dorothy grew up in White Sulphur Springs West Virginia. Dorothy was also a former neighbor of Katherine's.</p>
<p>Two weeks after Katherine started work in the West Computers, two men came in and had a quiet conversation with Dorothy. Shortly after, Dorothy told Katherine and another woman, Erma Tynes that Flight Research was requesting two computers and she would be sending them to 1244. This was a gigantic step for Katherine, however temporary it might be. The Flight Research center was housed in a 295-by-300 foot hangar.</p>
<p>Katherine worked for the division chief, Henry Pearson on solving analytic geometry calculations. Soon, six months passed and Katherine was still with Flight Research. Dorothy Vaughan and Henry Pearson had a sit down meeting in the beginning of 1954. “Either giver hear a raise or send her back to me,” Vaughan told Pearson in his upstairs office. Pearson offered Katherine a full time position with Flight Research with a raise.</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Fourth Container -->
<div class="container bg-4 text-center">
<div class="jumbotron">
<img src="http://www.steampunk.dk/wp-content/uploads/apollo0141.jpg" class="img-responsive img-square margin" style="display: inline" alt="responsive image" width="500" height="500"/>
<footer>
<cite title="Source Title">Photo Credit: Steampunk.dk via NASA</cite>
</footer>
<blockquote>
<p>In 1957, the Soviet Union launder the first artificial satellite into space. This prompted the United States to push the own space program higher which also included another raise for Katherine. Her division shifted from aeronautics to space. Her work became more intricate as she was given more work due to the changes in her division. She was now assigned charts and equations for space technology lecture series. Katherine listened to every strain of conversations. The real conversations took place in the boardrooms and in meetings. Katherine sat down with engineers and asked questions. Why did the trajectory equation need to account for the oblateness of Earth? Why was it necessary to calculate an error ellipsoid to accurately predict the satellite's return to the planet's surface?</p>
<p>Finally, In 1958 Katherine was permitted into a meeting after months of asking why she couldn't attend an editorial meeting of the Guidance and Control Branch of Langley's Flight Research Division. Soon, it would be re-named the Aerospace Mechanics Division under NASA.</p>
<p>In November of 1959, Katherine wrote her first research report describing project Mercury's orbital flight, “Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite over a Selected Earth Position”. The 34 page books covered 22 principal equations, nine error equations, two launch case studies, three reference texts, two tables with sample calculations, and three pages of charts. The report took a months of data, testing, and researching. Glenn went through a final simulation of his full flight plan and a review of his orbital trajectory that had been generated by the IBM 7090 computer. Three days prior to his launch, astronaut John Glenn made a call to Ted Skipinski or John Mayer and told him to “Get the girl to check the numbers. If she says they're good, I'm good.” referring to Katherine. </p>
<p>Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson made tremendous strides and made an even bigger mark on history. She was recently awarded the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015. She is being portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the upcoming film “Hidden Figures” based on the book by the same name written by Margot Lee Shetterly. Still, Katherine has remained humbled. She says “I don't ever wait for something.” She's an accomplished woman that went after her dreams despite segregation and limited opportunities. </p>
<footer>Margot Lee Shetterly
<cite title="The Woman the Mercury Astronauts Couldn't Do Without">"The Woman the Mercury Astronauts Couldn't Do Without"</cite>
</footer>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Fifth Container -->
<div class="container bg-5">
<div class="jumbotron">
<ul class="Timeline">
<li><strong>1918</strong> Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia</li>
<li><strong>1937</strong> Graduates West Virgina State college</li>
<li><strong>1936-1953</strong> Teacher</li>
<li><strong>1953</strong> NACA (mathematician); Langley Research Center</li>
<li><strong>1958</strong> NASA Langley Research Center; Aerospace Technologist</li>
<li><strong>1967</strong> NASA Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft and Operations team award</li>
<li><strong>1967</strong> Apollo Group Achievement Award</li>
<li><strong>1971, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1986</strong> NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award</li>
<li><strong>1998</strong> Honorary Doctor of Laws, from SUNY Farmingdale</li>
<li><strong>1999</strong> West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year</li>
<li><strong>2006</strong> Honorary Doctor of Science by the Capitol College, Laurel, Maryland</li>
<li><strong>2010</strong> Honorary Doctorate of Science from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia</li>
<li><strong>2015</strong> NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom</li>
<li><strong>2016</strong> Silver Snoopy award from Leland Melvin, Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Arthur B.C. Walker II Award</li>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Sixth Container -->
<div class="container bg-6">
<div class="jumbotron">
<h3 class="lead">Works cited, sourced, and referenced from the following websites.</h3>
<footer>Cara Buckley<cite title="Source Title">"On Being a Black Female Math Whiz During the Space Race"</cite>
</footer>
<footer>Emine Saner<cite title="Source Title">"How history forgot the black women behind NASA's space race</cite>
</footer>
<footer>Visionary Project<cite title="Source Title">"Katherine Johnson:Visionary Videso: NVLP: African American History"</cite>
</footer>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Seventh Container -->
<div class="container bg-7">
<div class="jumbotron">
<h3 class="lead">Additional Resources</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/a-lifetime-of-stem.html">A Lifetime of Stem: Katherine Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g3AvxrVTic&feature=youtu.be">Katherine Johnson Legacy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/william-claytor-mathematical-genius">William Claytor Mathematical Genius</a></li>
<li><a href="http://thehumancomputerproject.com/women/katherine-johnson">Inspiring STEM stories from history</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson">Katherine Johnson-Wikipedia</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.makers.com/katherine-g-johnson">MAKERS PROFILE KATHERINE G. JOHNSON Mathematician, NASA</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/history/files/LessonPlan_JohnsonDardenandWestComputers.pdf">Lesson Plan:
“When Computers Wore Skirts:” Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and the “West Computers”</a></li>
<li><a href="http://margotleeshetterly.com/hidden-figures-nasas-african-american-computers/">Hidden Figures: The American Dream and The Untold Story of the Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Footer -->
<footer class="container-fluid bg-8 text-center">
<p>Designed, Coded, and Researched by Nicole Spangelo</p>
</footer>
<script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
</body>
</html>