SENATE RESOLUTION 66

By Senators Rucker, Boso, Clements, Stollings, Swope, Plymale, Unger, Beach and Miller

[Introduced April 3, 2017]

Honoring the accomplishments of Katherine Johnson, West Virginia native and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.

Whereas, Katherine Johnson was born August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the daughter of Joshua and Joylette Coleman; and

Whereas, By the age of thirteen, Katherine Johnson was attending the high school on the campus of historically African-American West Virginia State College. At eighteen, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to earn a PhD in Mathematics. She graduated summa cum laude in 1937, with degrees in Mathematics and French, at age 18; and

Whereas, Katherine Johnson was the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia; and

Whereas, In 1953, Katherine Johnson was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as a mathematician, and continued to work for the organization which became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958; and

Whereas, Katherine Johnson, from 1958 until her retirement in 1986, worked as an aerospace technologist, moving during her career to the Spacecraft Controls Branch; and

Whereas, During her extraordinary career at NASA, Katherine Johnson accomplished many amazing feats, such as: Calculating the trajectory for the May 5, 1961, space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission; she plotted backup navigational charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures; when NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify the computer's numbers. Glenn had asked for her specifically and had refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations; and Johnson also helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon; and

Whereas, In 1970, Katherine Johnson worked on the Apollo 13 moon mission. When the mission was aborted, her work on backup procedures and charts helped set a safe path for the crew’s return to Earth, creating a one-star observation system that would allow astronauts to determine their location with accuracy; and

Whereas, Katherine Johnson’s life served as the basis for a nonfiction book, titled Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, which inspired the award-winning motion picture; and

Whereas, In 2015, cited as a pioneering example of African-American women in STEM, President Barack Obama presented Katherine Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States; and

Whereas, It is fitting that the West Virginia Senate honor Katherine Johnson for her career as a pioneer in space science and computing and for her dedicated public service to a grateful nation; therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate:

That the Senate hereby honors the accomplishments of Katherine Johnson, West Virginia native and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient; and, be it

Further Resolved, That the Senate extends its sincere gratitude and appreciation to Katherine Johnson for her dedicated public service to the United States of America; and, be it

Further Resolved, That the Clerk is hereby directed forward a copy of this resolution to Katherine Johnson.