Memoir Grotjan Essay

It is an indisputable fact that women have had a huge impact on science in America over the years. Such influential women include Genevieve Grotjan, a codebreaker from World War II, and Katherine Johnson, a calculator for NASA for almost three and a half decades following 1953. Both women found extreme success in their fields, and respectively made huge contributions to cryptology and the math behind space launches. To begin with, Genevieve Grotjan was a fantastic help to the United States’s effort in World War II. As stated in paragraph seven of Cracking Code Purple, hostilities with Japan were ever on the rise during the 1940s, and thus codebreakers were tasked to, “‘listen to’ secret Japanese communications … and break the codes.” Grotjan was one of these codebreakers, and was the one to finally make a breakthrough with the Japanese code nicknamed “Purple” by the Americans who worked to break it. This woman’s breakthrough allowed the United States to create a machine that could translate future Japanese transmissions. Some, such as a …show more content…
Katherine aided the U.S. during the ‘Space Race’ against the rest of the world (namely the Russia), and helped put a Alan Shepard in orbit around the Earth, and send three men to moon. When first calculating the location and time of Shepard’s departure to space, NASA struggled greatly. According to the article Who is Katherine Johnson?, through her tremendous efforts and intelligence, Johnson managed to “calculate when and where the rocket would have to launch,” in order to travel and land in the correct spot. Later, when work on the first moon launch commenced under order of President Kennedy, Katherine provided calculations that, “were instrumental in NASA’s success,” (paragraph 13). Through her colossal achievements in mathematics, Katherine helped to improve the art of human space travel, and has left a lasting mark on human