Biography of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson. Shares the story of the pioneering African American mathematician, Katherine Johnson, who helped calculate America's first manned flight into space, its first manned orbit of Earth, and the world's first trip to the moon.

The woman at the heart of the New York Times bestseller and Oscar-winning film "Hidden Figures" shares her personal journey from child prodigy in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia to NASA human computer and her integral role in the early years of the U.S. space program. In 2015, at the age of ninety-seven, Johnson became a global celebrity for her pioneering work as a mathematician on NASA's first flight into space. In her memoir Johnson provides...

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these "colored computers," as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America's...

The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they recruited an elite group of young women- known as human computers- who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American ballistic missiles. But they were...