Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician, honored on 100th birthday

INSTITUTE, W.Va. — West Virginia State University has honored NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson with a bronze statue and scholarship dedication on the eve of her 100th birthday.

Six of Johnson’s grandchildren revealed the statue during a ceremony Saturday on the West Virginia State campus in Institute.

The university also awarded a scholarship in Johnson’s name to two students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math.

Johnson turned 100 on Sunday. She graduated from the school in 1937 at age 18 with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and French.

Johnson and three other women crunched numbers at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They worked in the pre-computer age, calculating rocket trajectories and orbits for the earliest American space flights.

Johnson was featured in the book and 2016 film “Hidden Figures.”