This week, to celebrate International Women’s Day, FemSoc are showcasing some of their most inspirational women, on day 5, International Women's Day, to end our segment we have Katherine Johnson.

Katherine Johnson, known as the human computer, was a renowned mathematician who worked at NASA. Her work focused on calculating trajectories for multiple space missions, including Apollo and Project Mercury, the first mission to put an American astronaut into space. Even when NASA began to use computers, they would check the calculations with Johnson, because she was so consistently accurate.

However, as an African-American woman, Johnson faced frequent racism and sexism – despite her calculations being critical to NASA’s successful missions. President Obama described her as “expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach,” and in 2015, she was honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

You can find out more about Katherine Johnson’s life here!