A true American pioneer passed away this week, and the lessons she taught by the way she lived her life must never be forgotten.

Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician whose life was portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film “Hidden Figures,” died Monday in Newport News, Virginia. She was 101.

As her story was told, first in a book then in the movie adaptation, Johnson was an integral part of the early space missions for the United States. In a statement released after Johnson’s death, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Johnson “helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color.”

At the start of her amazing aerospace career, Johnson and the other “computers” who solved complication equations by hand worked in a racially segregated unit when the space program was called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

In 1958 when NACA became NASA, the segregation ended.

Johnson’s stellar work at NASA’s Langley Research Center, The Associated Press reported, eventually shifted to Project Mercury, the nation’s first human space program.

Johnson did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission and then she manually verified the calculations of an early NASA computer, which plotted John Glenn’s orbits around the planet.

“Get the girl to check the numbers,” a computer-skeptical Glenn had insisted in the days before the launch, according to the AP.

Margot Lee Shetterly, who wrote the 2016 book “Hidden Figures” on which the film is based, told the AP that Johnson was “exceptional in every way.”

“The wonderful gift that Katherine Johnson gave us is that her story shined a light on the stories of so many other people,” Shetterly said. “She gave us a new way to look at black history, women’s history and American history.”

Playing a key role in Johnson’s success was her father. The small town Johnson grew up in didn’t have a school for blacks, so her dad drove her and her siblings to Institute, West Virginia, for high school and college on the campus of West Virginia State College.

Her total career was absolutely amazing, including work on the Apollo moon missions — her calculations helped the lunar lander rendezvous with the orbiting command service module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle program before retiring in 1986.

In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and she continued to reach out, encouraging students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, including speaking with some youngsters the week before her death.

We salute Katherine Johnson and we hope many young people are inspired to follow in her footsteps, reaching for the moon.