Molly's Computer Science Superheroes

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson was born on August 26, 1918 in West Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. She died at the age of 101, on February 4, 2020. Johnson had a brilliant mind from a young age. She started high school at 10 years old. She graduated with top grades and high honors from West Virginia State College earning Bachelor's degrees in mathematics and French. In 1939 Johnson was selected to be one of three African Americans to enroll in a graduate program at West Virginia State University, where she furthered her studies in mathematics. Katherine Johnson began working at NASA in the summer of 1953. In her three decades there she calculated the flight paths for many spacecrafts. She calculated the flight trajectory for Apollo 11, the mission to the moon in 1969. In 1986 she retired from NASA.

Katherine Johnson Biography Britannica
Katherine Johnson Biography NASA
NASA Women: Katherine Johnson

Larry Page

Larry Page is one of the co-founders of Google a popular search engine. He was born on March 26th, 1973. He grew up in Michigan and received his computer engineering degree, from the University of Michigan in 1995. Page then entered the doctorate program at Stanford, where he met his soon to be lifelong co-worker, Sergey Brin. Google was created to fulfill Page and Brin's mission, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and usable."

Larry Page Achievements
Larry Page Biography Britannica
The Story of Google

Margaret Hamilton

Date of Birth: August 17, 1936. Date of Death: N/A. Margarete Hamilton studied math at the University of Michigan and Earlham college and got a bachelor's degree. She then worked in the math labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Here, she learned about software engineering. Margarete Hamilton helped write the flight software for the NASA Apollo Missions. During her time at NASA she lead a team of 100 software engineers that created emergency detection systems for the Apollo missions. She's impacted computer science by publicizing the concept of software engineering. She has also produced over 130 papers on computer science.

Margaret Hamilton's Apollo Code NASA
Margaret Hamilton: Software Engineer
Margaret Hamilton: Unsung Heroes in Science
Margaret Hamilton: Computer History Museum