Katherine Johnson: NASA's Pioneering Female Physicist (thenewstack.io)

destinyland writes: Tuesday's State of the Union address included a shout-out to Katherine Johnson, the pioneering African American mathematician and physicist who calculated the trajectory of Alan Shepherd's 1961 space trip. "Her reputation was so strong that John Glenn asked her to recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth," notes one technology reporter. NASA policy at the time was to not acknowledge the female contributors to scientific papers, though "She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science," according to one NASA official, noting that her impact literally reaches all the way to the moon. At a ceremony in November, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the 97-year-old pioneer continues to encourage young people to also pursue careers in technology, science, engineering and math.

Comments

We now get Monday "White Male Guilt" articles?

[Anonymous Coward]

So in additional to the Friday "Social Justice" articles, we now get Monday "White Male Guilt" articles, too?

Come on, why even mention her race? She's a mathematician and physicist. Just leave it at that. There's no need to bring race or gender into it.

I don't see how race affects her ability to do math or physics.

I don't see how gender affects her ability to do math or physics.

So why mention it? Is it just some pathetic attempt to get the many white males here feeling "guilty" merely for being born as white males?

As a society, we will never get past racism and sexism as long as social justice types constantly keep bringing up race and gender.

Instead of focusing on our differences, why not focus on our similarities? We all love math and science. We don't need to waste our time considering what our races are, or what our genders are.

But I suppose if the social justice types did let us move beyond constantly focusing on race and gender, they'd have nothing to bitch and moan about. So it isn't in their best interest to actually eliminate racism and sexism; these are the very things that the social justice types exploit to give themselves power.