42 - West Virginia, Katherine Johnson
I made a last minute switch, which hadn't happened yet. But when I found out Katherine Johnson was born in West Virginia made me thrilled to see it wasn't too late to highlight such a wonderful woman. West Virginia is the 34th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment on March 10, 1920. A concise description of Mrs. Johnson’s work included “calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars.” Mrs. Johnson was sent out of County for high school because her aptitude for mathematics was evident, and her home County did not offer public schooling for African-Americans past eighth grade. She...