Katherine Johnson loved to count. “I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to the church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed … anything that could be counted, I did.” So, it is no surprise that eventually the young girl became a mathematician for NASA and helped to send rockets into space with men on them. Her story is a historic first for Black women, and women in general.
Mathematics was considered to be a “boy’s subject” in the 1940s, 50s, and into the 60s. Some of that gender bias even persists today. But Katherine Johnson who was born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, had a love for mathematics was inherent, an inclination she had from birth. It propelled her to overcome the gender exclusion that math and later STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs incorporated.
When the opportunity to attend school finally did come, Johnson so excelled that she began her studies in the second grade, and then moved into advanced classes. By age 10, Johnson was in high school. Johnson did so well in her classes that she graduated early from high school, and at age 15 she entered West Virginia State College.
One of her professors at West Virginia State College helped Johnson with her choice of majors since she was wavering between English, French, and mathematics. She told Johnson, “If you don’t show up for my class, I will come and find you.” And so it was, through part threat and part joke, Johnson steered her way into what was already her first love: mathematics.
Another professor at West Virginia State, the renowned mathematician Dr. William W. Claytor, recognized the bright and inquisitive mind that Johnson had. “You’d make a great research mathematician,” he told her. Claytor went beyond just encouragement and became her mentor and helped her find her way into research mathematics. Johnson said, “Many professors tell you that you’d be good at this or that, but they don’t always help you with that career path. Professor Claytor made sure I was prepared to be a research mathematician.”
At age 18, Johnson graduated summa cum laude with Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and French. Johnson ended up teaching after college which, at that time, was the only option for her in her community. Later, she stopped teaching to marry and start her family but when her husband fell ill in 1952, she began to teach again.
In the 1950s, before NASA was formed, there was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). They were specifically looking for African American females to work as “computers” in what was then their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson began working for NACA in 1953. She started as one of the women who worked on problems assigned by the engineers in what was then the Guidance and Control Branch.
In keeping with the State of Virginia's racial segregation laws, and federal workplace segregation introduced under President Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century, Johnson and the other African American women in the computing pool were required to work, eat, and use restrooms that were separate from those of their white peers. Their office was labeled as "Colored Computers".
As Johnson worked on the problems, she would ask questions. She didn’t want to just do the work — she wanted to know the “hows” and the “whys” and then the “why nots.” None of the other women had ever asked questions before, but by asking questions, Johnson began to stand out. Soon, Johnson began to attend briefings. NACA was just beginning its work in space. She was the first Black female to attend such briefings.
Traveling in space is essentially a mathematical problem to solve, especially using geometry. This was a field of math that Johnson excelled in and soon she became known as a leader, and the men increasingly relied on her for her calculations. She plotted “space windows” calculating times for launch, plotted backup navigation charts for astronauts in the case of electronic failure, and later worked directly with digital computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped to establish confidence in the new technology.
The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history—and Johnson’s life. In 1957, she provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD) of NACA. These lectures provided the foundation for the establishment of NASA.
By 1958, Johnson, who had worked with many of the engineers, “came along with the program” as NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. The flight was a success.
In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda. Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.”
Later, Johnson provided the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. In 1970, Johnson worked on the Apollo 13 Moon mission. When the mission was aborted, her work on backup procedures and charts helped set a safe path for the crew's return to Earth, creating a one-star observation system that would allow astronauts to determine their location with accuracy. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite in the 1970s. She even worked on eventual plans to send manned flights to Mars.
She retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she said. In 2015, at age 97, Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. President Obama said at the time, "Katherine G. Johnson refused to be limited by society's expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity's reach."
She died on Feb. 24, 2020, at 101 years old. NASA Administrator James Bridenstine said, “Our NASA family is sad to learn the news that Katherine Johnson passed away this morning... She was an American hero, and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten.”
A NASA facility has been named in her honor. On May 5, 2016, a new 40,000-square-foot building was named the "Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility". Johnson was included on the BBC's list of 100 Women of Influence worldwide in 2016. In a 2016 video NASA stated, "Her calculations proved as critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program and the start of the Space Shuttle program, as they did to those first steps on the country's journey into space."
Then of course, there was the film Hidden Figures, released in December 2016, which was based on the non-fiction book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly. It follows Johnson and other female African American mathematicians (Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan) who worked at NASA. In an interview, Johnson offered the following comment about the movie: "It was well done. The three leading ladies did an excellent job portraying us."
Katherine Johnson deserves to be remembered during Black History Month as a model of someone who overcame societal racial obstacles and gender expectations to become a true American hero.
Here is a short video about Katherine Johnson from NASA: