CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — NASA confirmed the death of Katherine Johnson at the age of 101. She was a mathematician who worked on early space missions. Nicknamed a “human-computer," she calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits by hand during NASA’s early years. She was portrayed in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures,” which concentrated on black, female aerospace workers.
A professor at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Alexey Sadovski, said Katherine Johnson was a key-component to the advancement of NASA in the 'space race.'
Sadovski said, "we can say [Katherine Johnson] breaking ceilings not just barriers, because it is only an exceptional person who can be in charge of all such calculations."
He continued to say Johnson shifted the narrative for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Even in his classes at the university he is seeing more women in his math classes and interested in the STEM profession.