Katherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician, to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

>"Early on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start. I said, 'Let me do it. You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll do it backwards and tell you when to take off.' That was my forte."

>By 1962, when John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, NASA was relying more on computers.

>"You could do much more, much faster on computer," Johnson said. "But when they went to computers, they called over and said, 'tell her to check and see if the computer trajectory they had calculated was correct.' So I checked it and it was correct."

This lady is fantastic and it's about time she gets this - absolutely deserved.

What an amazing story. Great to hear of people like Katherine!