NEW ORLEANS — Two St. Mary’s Academy students, gifted in math, who proved an ancient math problem, and whose accomplishment was featured on WWL-TV and 60 Minutes, did not go unnoticed by former legendary NBA player and sports commentator Charles Barkley.
Barkley saw Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson featured on 60 Minutes and how they used trigonometry to prove the 2000-year-old Pythagorean Theorem, a feat mathematicians said was impossible.
As AL.com reports, Barkley was so impressed with Johnson and Jackson’s achievement, that he pledged to donate $1 million to St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans East.
“Our students can do anything, and that’s what we tell them,” St. Mary’s Academy principal, Pamela Rogers, told 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker. “We teach young women to give service, to empower themselves, [and] to be in the community. We teach them to grow spiritually, intellectually…to be good people and give to one another.”
Last March, Johnson and Jackson gave a presentation at the American Mathematical Society's Annual Southeastern Conference. They found a way to prove the Pythagorean Theorem using trigonometry without circular logic—something mathematicians have been trying to do for nearly 2,000 years.
That accomplishment impressed a lot of people including Barkley which compelled him to donate to the school.
Barkley also pledged to donate $1 million to the women’s athletics program at his alma mater Auburn.
And where are they now? Calcea is in her freshman year at LSU and Ne'Kiya is attending Xavier University of Louisiana.
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