Johnson hand-computed the flight path for America’s first Earth orbit in 1962 (it took her a day and a half to match an IBM computer’s calculations) and, later, the first lunar landing. She died in her prime at age 101. (National Geographic)

Talking point: Johnson remained mostly unknown outside of the space agency until 2016, when Margot Lee Shetterly published the book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. The book, Shetterly said, retold the story of how astronaut John Glenn “looked to this Black woman in the still-segregated South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success.” In 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins also flew to the moon using Johnson’s mathematics. “I computed the path that would get you there,” Johnson recalled. “We told them how fast they would be going, and the moon would be there by the time you got there.”