Born in 1918, in the little town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Katherine Johnson was simply attracted by numbers. As a child, she counted everything. She counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes she washed …By the time she was 10 years old, she was a high school freshman, which was truly amazing in a time when school for African-Americans normally stopped at eighth grade. To meet her math potential （潜力），her father drove his family 120 miles to Institute, West Virginia, where blacks could continue high school education. Johnson's excellent performance proved her father's decision was the right one: Katherine skipped grades （跳级）to graduate from high school at 14 and from college at 18.
1953, after years as a teacher and later as a stay-at-home mom, she began working for NASA, which began hiring women to measure and calculate the results of wind tunnel （风洞）tests in 1935. In a time before the electronic computers, these women were called "computer". Even after NASA began using electronic computers, the astronaut John Glenn requested that she should personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight.
She continued to work at NASA until 1986. Her calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program and the United States' journey into space. Her story was the basis for the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
Katherine Johnson, a great mathematician, physicist, space scientist and the last computer that wore skirts, passed away on February 24, 2020.
【小题1】What can be inferred from Paragraph 1?| A．Katherine left high school at eighth grade. |
| B．Katherine was gifted in math as a child. |
| C．Katherine was required to count in her childhood, |
| D．African-Americans had a good education in the 1920s. |
| A．18 years. | B．33 year. | C．51 years. | D．81 years. |
| A．Important. | B．Successful. | C．Dangerous. | D．Harmful. |
| A．Scientists at NASA |
| B．Katherine Johnson's Education |
| C．A Great Mathematician's Decision |
| D．Katherine Johnson,a Computer that Wore Skirts |
