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Picotte was born on June 17, 1885 on the Omaha reservation in Nebraska.

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She attributes her inspiration to an event that stuck with her from a child. Watching a sick Indian woman die due to the blatant disregard of a white doctor gave Susan all the motivation to later train to be a physician. She dreamed of one day providing the care her people deserved on the Omaha Reservation.

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Susan went to school on the reservation where at 14 she began homeschooling. Her father encouraged the need for continuing education as well as building relationships with the white reform groups.

Susan attended the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey. Upon return from school she began teaching at the Quaker Mission School on the Omaha Reservation.

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During her time teaching at the Quaker school, Susan attended to a woman, Alice Fletcher. Fletcher encouraged her to further her education. This push drove Susan to attend one of the first higher education schools for non-white students, the Hampton Institute.

The Hampton Institute brought forth another pivotal woman to put in Susan's path. A physician there motivated Susan to go further to attend the school that she went to, Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP).

Fletcher would reenter Susan's life to further help by securing scholarship funds from the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs and the Connecticut Indian Association. Susan would graduate a 3 year program in just 2 years in 1889 at the top of her class.

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Susan La Flesche returned home to marry Henry Picotte in 1894. The couple picked up and moved to Nebraska where she set up a private practice served both white and non-white patients.

The couple raised two sons and in 1913, she saw her life's dream fulfilled when she opened up a hospital in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska.

This hospital now stands as a museuem to the works of the late Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte

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-1st American Indian woman to graduate from medical school
-In 1913, she fundraised for and built the county’s first modern hospital, the first privately funded hospital on a reservation.

The issues that La Flesche fought for were public health, land rights, tribal sovereignty.

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Amin, A. (2023, March 7). Susan La Flesche Picotte: The first American indian doctor. PBS. Retrieved April 22, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/meet-first-american-indian-woman-physician-ienwy3/14818/

National Institutes of Health. (2015, June 3). Changing the face of medicine | Susan La Flesche picotte. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved April 22, 2023, from https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_253.html

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Katherine was born in 1918 in the small town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Growing up she loved numbers and counting things. She was known as the girl who loved counting.

Amazingly she started high school when she was just 10 years old and went on to college at the young age of 15!  Her favorite subject was undoubtedly math. It was no surprise that she studied to be a mathematician in college and when she was 18 she graduated.

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Katherine taught while raising her two children until one day, NACA (what it was called then) announced they were hiring african-american women to a role as a "computer."

Katherine was hired her second time around applying to this job and she worked alongside a lot of other women in her role as a "computer," to solve math problems.

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Katherine's love for math made her the perfect employee of NASA. She did not want to just do the bare minimum, she wanted to more and learn more! She began attending meetings where men were once only allowed but this remarkable woman changed that.

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Her love for learning and perserverance paid off and she left her job as a "computer," to become a member on teams for NASA's projects. She started to study how to use geometry for space travel when the US announced their plans to travel to the moon.

Her math helped send astronauts to the moon and back!

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it is hard to imagine how skilled she must've truly been to accomplish all that she did. We take for granted the tools we have now when back in her time, there were not any!

In the 1950s, there were no computers like we have today. People had to solve hard math problems by themselves. They often used adding machines and rulers. These people were called “computers.” The NACA (NASA) hired women to work as computers.

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Katherine Johnson worked for NASA for 30 years.

Her work is attributed to the
-critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program
-and the start of the Space Shuttle program
-the first steps on the country's journey into space
-1967 NASA Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft and Operations team award

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Tuesday, November 24, 2015, she received the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Barack H. Obama.

Johnson passed away at the age of 101 leaving a mark on history.

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Wild, F. (2016) Who was Katherine Johnson?, NASA. NASA. Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/who-was-katherine-johnson-k4 (Accessed: April 26, 2023).

Smith, Y. (2015, November 20). Katherine Johnson: The girl who loved to count. NASA. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from https://www.nasa.gov/feature/katherine-johnson-the-girl-who-loved-to-count