Katherine Johnson

Mar 31

Physicist and Mathematician

Katherine Johnson is hailed as an American hero. Having received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2015, and the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA in 2016, Katherine Johnson was recognized for her contributions to the success of the first U.S crewed spaceflights.

Born in 1918 Creola Katherine Coleman, she was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher, and her father a handyman. She showed strong mathematical ability from a young age and excelled through her school career, beginning high school at age 10. At age 15 she enrolled at West Virginia State, a historically black college. As a student, she took every math course the college offered, and graduated summa cum laude in 1937, at age 18. She took on a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia.

At age 34 she heard that NACA (later renamed NASA) was hiring African American women to solve math problems. These workers were named “computers.” Their main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other mathematical tasks. Her curiosity and work ethic lead to her promotion to an all-male research team. While she faced a lot of gender and racial bias, she ignored it and simply told people that she belonged.

From 1958 until her retirement in 1986 she worked as an aerospace technologist. Amazingly, she calculated the trajectory for the 1961 space flight of Alan Shephard, the first American in space! Her reputation eventually preceded her, and many astronauts insisted that she verify the calculations before they would fly. She also calculated the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon. Author Margot Lee Shetterly stated, "So the astronaut who became a hero, looked to this black woman in the still-segregated South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success."

Through hard work and unwavering dedication, Katherine literally changed the trajectory of history - ensuring the safe flight paths of astronauts, but also paving the way for other colored working women of the time.

Powerful Quotes by a Powerful Woman

“Take all the courses in your curriculum. Do the research. Ask questions. Find someone doing what you are interested in! Be curious!”

“The women did what they were told to do. They didn’t ask questions or take the task any further. I asked questions; I wanted to know why. They got used to me asking questions and being the only woman there.”

“In math, you’re either right or you’re wrong.”

“We needed to be assertive as women in those days – assertive and aggressive – and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be.”