Counting the stars: The Story of Katherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician
Biography, Science and technology, Women biography, Science and medicine biography, United States travel and geography
Human-narrated audio
Summary
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or astronauts walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines, and writing paper to calculate the orbital mechanics needed to launch spacecraft.… Katherine Johnson was one of these mathematicians who used trajectories and complex equations to chart the space program. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws were in place in the early 1950s, Katherine worked analyzing data at the NACA (later NASA) Langley laboratory. For grades 2-4