Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history when they became the first humans to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. The Apollo 11 mission was the result of decades of research, hundreds of scientific experiments, and the work of tens of thousands of dedicated people.
But the contributions of one woman outshined the rest: Katherine Johnson. She was a NASA mathematician who calculated the detailed flight path the spacecraft would take from Earth to the moon. This month, a movie about Johnson and NASA’s other black female mathematicians hit theaters. Titled Hidden Figures, it’s based on a book of the same name.