In 1960 Katherine Johnson and the engineer Ted Skopinski wrote a NASA report on equations for orbital spaceflight. According to NASA, it was “the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.”
Before his orbital flight, the astronaut John Glenn asked the engineers to “get the girl.” He wanted Johnson to check the computer’s numbers by hand. In 2015, at 97, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. Taraji P. Henson played her in the film Hidden Figures.