Marion Lee Johnson facts for kids
Marion Lee Johnson is an amazing American mathematician. Her work was super important for the Apollo 11 mission, which landed humans on the Moon! She was a mathematician for the Boeing and NASA team. Her job was to prepare data about where rocket parts would fall after launch. She did a perfect job on 20 successful missions. Because of this, she was honored on the Apollo/Saturn V Roll of Honor.
After her NASA work, she worked for a company called Pfizer for 26 years. She lives in New Jersey today.
Early Life and Education
Marion Lee Johnson was born in Savannah, Georgia. She grew up in a working-class family with three sisters and one brother. She went to Moses Jackson school in a neighborhood that was segregated at the time.
From a young age, Marion loved mathematics. She says her 7th-grade math teacher, Walter B. Simmons, inspired this love. She was a top student and graduated as the valedictorian from Thompkins High School in 1963.
In 1967, she received a scholarship to study mathematics at Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama. She thought she would become a teacher after college. When her grades dropped, she lost her scholarship. But Marion was determined! She took out a loan to keep studying. She worked hard to get her grades back up and earn her scholarship again.
Working with NASA
After graduating, at age 21, Marion started working as an associate engineer. She joined the Boeing Company in Huntsville, Alabama. She was part of the Boeing/NASA team at the Marshall Space Flight Centre. Her main task was to help prepare for the Apollo 11 mission's landing.
At that time, not many women worked at the Space Flight Centre. Marion worked with famous rocket designers like Arthur Rudolph and Wernher von Braun. She did calculations to figure out where booster rockets would fall after launch. This was called simulating "vehicle piece impact trajectories."
Marion found Boeing to be a very diverse place. In an interview, she said, "You had a lot of people there - a lot of people from all different cultures - and we all worked together." She didn't fully realize how important her work was until she saw the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. That movie showed the amazing contributions of other African-American women mathematicians at NASA.
Later Career and Honors
After two years with Boeing/NASA, Marion Lee Johnson moved on. She began working at Pfizer, Inc., a big company. There, she became a Project Leader for the Corporate Information Technology Division. She worked at Pfizer for 26 years before retiring.
More recently, she retired from Branford Hall Career Institute. At the institute, she taught Computer Networking and Security. Marion lives in Union County, New Jersey. The city of Plainfield honored her by giving her the key to the city. They even set aside two days to celebrate her achievements!
Marion is married to J. Frank Johnson. They have three children together. Her husband owns a company that helps people with accounting and taxes.
