To the Editor:

Re “Katherine Johnson, 1918-2020: NASA’s Shining Star, Undiscovered for Decades” (obituary, front page, Feb. 25):

I was saddened at the death of Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician who shattered racial and gender glass ceilings as her calculations of spaceflight trajectories took American astronauts to the Moon and returned them safely to Earth.

The poet Robert Browning wrote that “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Thanks to Mrs. Johnson’s brilliance, our collective grasp finally matched our reach as the heavens became a place for us to visit and explore.

Stephen A. Silver

San Francisco

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