![]() ![]() She and her three siblings moved 190 kilometres to Institute, West Virginia, to attend a school for Black pupils that went beyond primary grades. Just as a rocket thrusts a space capsule upwards, Johnson benefited from the sacrifices of her parents. Comparing orbital prediction with hunting, she writes: “You aim where you think the rabbit will be.” Family support Her down-home way of explaining science is enjoyable, too. I felt like I was sitting at the knee of a griot - a historian and storyteller - gaining years of insight into how to use idle times to prepare, to keep moving forwards when life hurts. Johnson recognizes that she is a role model, and that few women and people of colour see their reflections in the sciences. She entitles her chapters with life lessons - ‘Education Matters’, ‘Ask Brave Questions’, ‘Shoot for the Moon’. Meanwhile, she had to navigate her own path in an age when segregation and disenfranchisement were legal in the United States. At NASA, she calculated trajectories and launch windows for the Project Mercury human space-flight programme. After that, Johnson unfolds how a mathematics prodigy from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, became a ‘human computer’ for some of the most watched rocket launches in history. It begins with exuberance, describing how public recognition changed her final years, from attending the Oscars in 2017 to being honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 - and getting a kiss from president Barack Obama. Written with her daughters and an award-winning journalist, it captures Johnson’s story against the backdrop of a dramatic century of US history. My Remarkable Journey is a masterful memoir of a life well lived. Johnson, who was highlighted in the 2016 blockbuster movie Hidden Figures, died last year, aged 101. Little did society know that, as mathematicians, Black women such as Katherine Johnson actually made space flight possible. When Star Trek first aired in the 1960s, communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) seemed to be the only Black woman affiliated with space travel. ![]() My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir Katherine Johnson, Joylette Hylick & Katherine Moore, with Lisa Frazier Page Amistad (2021) Katherine Johnson performing calculations for space missions at NASA in 1966.
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