Katherine Johnson Dies at 101; Mathematician Broke Barriers at NASA (nytimes.com) 58
The New York Times: They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them. Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, whose death at 101 was announced on Monday by NASA, calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong's history-making moonwalk, let it return to Earth. A single error, she well knew, could have dire consequences for craft and crew. Her impeccable calculations had already helped plot the successful flight of Alan B. Shepard Jr., who became the first American in space when his Mercury spacecraft went aloft in 1961. The next year, she likewise helped make it possible for John Glenn, in the Mercury vessel Friendship 7, to become the first American to orbit the Earth. Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson's 33 years in NASA's Flight Research Division -- the office from which the American space program sprang -- and for decades afterward, almost no one knew her name.
Mrs. Johnson was one of several hundred rigorously educated, supremely capable yet largely unheralded women who, well before the modern feminist movement, worked as NASA mathematicians. But it was not only her sex that kept her long marginalized and long unsung: Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, a West Virginia native who began her scientific career in the age of Jim Crow, was also African-American. In old age, Mrs. Johnson became the most celebrated of the small cadre of black women -- perhaps three dozen -- who at midcentury served as mathematicians for the space agency and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Their story was told in the 2016 Hollywood film "Hidden Figures," based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same title, published that year. The movie starred Taraji P. Henson as Mrs. Johnson, the film's central figure. It also starred Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae as her real-life colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson.
Mrs. Johnson was one of several hundred rigorously educated, supremely capable yet largely unheralded women who, well before the modern feminist movement, worked as NASA mathematicians. But it was not only her sex that kept her long marginalized and long unsung: Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, a West Virginia native who began her scientific career in the age of Jim Crow, was also African-American. In old age, Mrs. Johnson became the most celebrated of the small cadre of black women -- perhaps three dozen -- who at midcentury served as mathematicians for the space agency and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Their story was told in the 2016 Hollywood film "Hidden Figures," based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same title, published that year. The movie starred Taraji P. Henson as Mrs. Johnson, the film's central figure. It also starred Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae as her real-life colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson.
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If they had a husband. Even today divorce is much more likely to have long term negative economic consequences for women than for men.
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If they had a husband.
Black women are less likely to marry, and nearly twice as likely to divorce as white women.
If a black woman marries a white man, they are no more likely to divorce than a white/white marriage. If a black man marries a white woman, they are as likely to divorce as a black/black couple. So apparently, it is black men who are the problem.
Divorce in the United States: Rates of divorce [wikipedia.org]
Re:Black women have always had to work. White wome (Score:4, Insightful)
Now control for income.
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Aww, you ruined the whole racist spiel.
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and prison rates, which we know are higher for black males for the same crimes. Also education which is worse for black males than for white males.
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and prison rates, which we know are higher for black males for the same crimes.
I'm not familiar with the US specifically, but that is to be expected if blacks have higher crime rates. For example, a black man is more likely to be a repeat offender than a non-black charged with the same crime. (I'm not saying there is no racism, just that your numbers are no evidence of it.)
Also education which is worse for black males than for white males.
There are many correlates. You might as well ask Bill to control for sunscreen consumption, or which magazines they subscribe to. Are you suggesting education level has a direct causal effect on sentencing?? But a q
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I don't want to oversimplify what is a complex subject, but there are a couple of simple factors which contribute the the disparity in incarceration rates. Blacks are often prosecuted for offenses that whites are given a pass on, like loitering, possessing small quantities of marijuana, disorderly conduct. Even living in the same household with someone who deals drugs in that household can get you accessory or conspiracy charges.
Black defendants are more likely to use public defenders than white ones, and
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also control for prison rates and education.
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The USA control for prison rates? You've gotta be kidding me.
USA, the richest most privileged country in the world, has the highest prison rates in world [wikipedia.org] at 655 per 100,000. Even if you take out all black prisoners (37%) (giving 412 per 100K) that is still an order of magnitude higher than Japan's prison rates (39 per 100K). Even if you just count whites (32% of USA prisoners) you end up with 330 per 100K of whites, which 3 times higher than peers like the UK o
Re: Black women have always had to work. White wo (Score:2)
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And i've met white people with African DNA 1/16th or less. What's your point?
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And in the past, it was considereed a contaminant. You could sometimes pass for white but once your past was discovered you'd be second class or worse just like any other african american of slave descent. The Jim Crow laws would apply to you, the red-lined neighborhoods would be shut off to you, your job prospects would go way down, etc. At the time Katherine Johnson was working at NASA, all of those disadvantages were still in full force, and it's likely that everywhere she went she was treated as 100% n
Re: Pretty sure Trump doesn't know, or care. (Score:1)
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And when a white male is hired it's always because of the old boy network. Everyone has certain advantages in this world to rise above the rabble, and everyone should use them if they can. So it's just as dumb to not hire someone because they may have had an affirmative action leg up than it is to refuse to hire the GQ Harvard boy because he was a legacy.
On the shoulders of giants (Score:5, Insightful)
We see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants, thank you Katherine Johnson and may you find peace and glory in your eternal rest.
Re:On the shoulders of giants (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case we went farther because of the giant shoulders that the astronauts rode upon. Everyone from Katherine Johnson and the crew of computers and engineers to the master welders, machinists, and even the custodial staff. It was a project were we were 'All In!'.
Thank you Ms. Johnson for doing your part.
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Possibly the greatest engineering project in human history. A technical achievement for the ages.
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you obviously don't know much about how hard it was to get tax increases to get public sanitation funded.
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Yes, greater. Thanks for asking.
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Possibly the greatest engineering project in human history. A technical achievement for the ages.
Indeed. We learned a lot from the Apollo project. The most important thing we learned is that it was completely the wrong way to do space exploration. The negative lessons are often the most valuable.
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"The most important thing we learned is that it was completely the wrong way to do space exploration."
So what was the right way? What technology did we have in the late 1960s that was far superior to the rockets and capsules used in the Apollo project?
I just love all of the armchair experts who go "no-no-no! You need to do it like THIS!" and fuck all of the people who actually got the job DONE. If this kind of thinking dominated all, we would be still sitting in caves going ooga-booga and w
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"The astronaut is only the most visible member of a very large team. And all of us - right down to the guy sweeping the floor - are honored to be a part of it. What did the man say? 'Give me a lever long enough and I'll move the world.' Well, that's exactly what we're doing here. This is divine inspiration, folks."
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I don't see as far as others, because I stand in the footsteps of giants.
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We see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants, thank you Katherine Johnson and may you find peace and glory in your eternal rest.
I echo your sentiments about Katherine Johnson. I think she was a giant herself.
But be careful with this "shoulders of giants" phrase. It was uttered originally by Isaac Newton, not as a magnanimous nod to those who came before him, but as a sarcastic snub to Robert Hooke, his arch-rival, who was a short man.
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ClickOnThis cautioned:
But be careful with this "shoulders of giants" phrase. It was uttered originally by Isaac Newton, not as a magnanimous nod to those who came before him, but as a sarcastic snub to Robert Hooke, his arch-rival, who was a short man.
I'm pretty sure Newton considered Gottfried Leibniz [wikipedia.org] to be his "arch-rival," not Hooke. Then again, Newton was convinced Leibniz somehow stole "the calculus" from him, because he coudn't accept the idea that anyone else could have independently developed it at the same time - mostly due to the fact that "steam engine time" wouldn't arrive for a couple of centuries afterward ...
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I'm pretty sure Newton considered Gottfried Leibniz [wikipedia.org] to be his "arch-rival," not Hooke. Then again, Newton was convinced Leibniz somehow stole "the calculus" from him, because he coudn't accept the idea that anyone else could have independently developed it at the same time - mostly due to the fact that "steam engine time" wouldn't arrive for a couple of centuries afterward ...
Newton was one of the greatest scientists in history. He was also an asshole. He made many enemies, not just Hooke and Liebniz. But Newton had a particular animosity towards Hooke, because the latter claimed to have discovered the inverse-square law of gravity before Newton. True, he also had animosity towards Liebniz, but the "shoulders of giants" saying was indeed directed at Hooke.
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Unheralded at the time. Before wikipedia, did many people know who this person was?
This also highlights one thing that's still prevalent - that women are unimportant to computing or uninterested in it, which is false. Computing has always had women in it. A human calculator was an acceptable clerical job for women in the past, but because it was clerical and also because it was women, there was less status applied to it. But it was the outlet for women who were interested in mathematics. When electroni
Talking Dog (Score:2)
Wow, a woman mathematician at NASA! (Subtext: women can't be mathematicians.)
Wow, a black person contributing technically at NASA! (Subtext: Black people can't do technical work.)
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Sure, sure, keep telling yourself that bucko
The fact is that they worked their slide rule fingers to the bone and delivered excellent work.
The fact that they did this while under racist dictates only makes their perseverance all the greater
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The fact that they did [excellent work] while under racist dictates only makes their perseverance all the greater
I'm certainly not saying their lives were free of challenges due to their race, but keep in mind that NASA integrated in the 1940s. I think the scenes about segregated bathrooms and such in the movie Hidden Figures was intended to reflect attitudes still present in society at the time.
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The above remark proves only that you see what you want to see in anything, and can color it in any way you desire to meet an agenda.
What makes this story news is not that she was a woman or that she was was black. What makes this story news is that a person who had played an important role in what is arguably one of the most pivotal progressive events in the history of human civilization has now regretfully passed on.
And those of us with any sense of human decency and who have better things to do tha
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You'd think this should be obvious right? Except that even today we still have boorish people claiming blacks are inferior and that women are unsuited to computer programming. These are ideas that should be obsolete, rare, and demeaned, and yet these ideas are commonplace on slashdot.
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I thought a talking dog made the news because he helped solve mysteries.
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Wow, a woman mathematician at NASA! (Subtext: women can't be mathematicians.)
The relevance is that this wasn't a subtext at the time, it was a prevailing attitude.
Wow, a black person contributing technically at NASA! (Subtext: Black people can't do technical work.)
The relevance is that this wasn't a subtext at the time, it was a prevailing attitude.
In fact Katherine is an ideal role model to demonstrate that inner capability can shine through irrespective of the environment, and the behaviour of modern professional victims is a disgrace and insult to her.
She was someone who deserved a Medal of Freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
And without the women that created computer programming, and the mathematicians like her, we'd still be using slide rules and abacus.
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Meh. (Score:3)
I broke barriers at my last job. Not only did I not get a movie made about me, they even made me pay to replace them and took away my parking permit.
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I broke the glass ceiling at one job, and boy where those guys angry!
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she did more than that. they often first had to set up the systems of equations to model the problem, then determine if there was an easy closed form solution, then if not find an approximation (NOT solution), and then actually compute it. BTW, the correct term is computer.
At least link to her NASA profile (Score:1)