Biography
Katherine Johnson was born on 26 August 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and from an early age she showed her talent for mathematics. Unfortunately, the laws of racial segregation that prevailed in the United States at that time meant that an African American could not study beyond the eighth grade in her native county. Determined that their sons and daughters would have a good education, Katherine's parents decided to move to Institute, where the West Virginia Colored Institute for African Americans was located.
She graduated at the early age of 14, and at the age of 15 she continued her higher studies at the so-called West Virginia State College, where she got her degrees in mathematics and French at the age of 18. During her years of study she had the support of several teachers, including chemistry and mathematician Angie Turner King and mathematician W.W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a Ph.D. in the United States. Professor Claytor saw such potential in Katherine that he created analytic geometry and aeronautics courses specifically for her.
In 1937 the (almost) only option for an African-American woman to work outside the home was to dedicate herself to teaching. This is how Katherine moved to Marion (Virginia) to work as a math, music and French teacher. According to her own words, it was in Virginia that she first consciously suffered the consequences of racial segregation and racism. Although it was also in Virginia where Katherine fought in some way against that segregation, she was one of three African-American students (the only woman) selected to pursue graduate study at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Unfortunately, family problems meant that Katherine was unable to finish her studies.
It was the year 1950 when she found out that the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), predecessor of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), was looking for African-American women for calculation tasks in the Department of Guidance and Navigation. During World War II, US government agencies hired thousands of women to carry out different activities. After the war, the NACA continued to apply such a policy, especially when the space race kicked off with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union years later. Although she was unable to get the job in 1950 because of a full contract, Katherine began working for the NACA in 1953.
As an expert in mathematics and geometry, her job was to perform all calculation operations and checks required by aeronautical engineers. That was a silent job that women did without asking anything. But Katherine wasn't content with just getting the job done. She started asking questions like “why”, “what for”, “how”, “why not” and asked to go to the meetings of the engineers so that she could discuss these questions with them. They told her that this was not common, to which she asked if it was prohibited. The answer was no, and that's how Katherine Johnson started going to meetings. Over time, she stood out not only for her knowledge but also for her leadership skills. Despite the initial barriers that she may have suffered at the beginning of her career due to her dual status as a woman and an African-American, little by little she gained recognition from her colleagues. Her amazing career as a mathematician, rocket scientist, and theoretical computer scientist made her a star at NACA/NASA.
She was in charge of carrying out the calculations of the Mercury Project developed by NASA between 1961 and 1963. She calculated the parabolic trajectory of the spaceflight of Alan Shepard, the first American to travel to space aboard Mercury Redstone 3 in 1961. This suborbital flight was made twenty-three days after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first orbital flight of mankind. In Katherine's own words “at the beginning, when they told me that they wanted the capsule to land in a certain place and that they were trying to calculate where and when they should launch, I told them: let me do it. Tell me when and where you want it on Earth and I will tell you when it should take off."
Although in 1962 NASA began to use electronic computers to perform the calculations, she was in charge of verifying the accounts of the computer that would take John Glenn on his orbital flight around the Earth in the Friendship 7 spacecraft.
Her magnificent work did not end there. She calculated the trajectory of Apollo 11 that would take humans to the Moon in 1969. In addition, her calculations helped to synchronize the lunar module with the orbital module. Katherine commented: “I had done the calculations and I knew they were correct, but anything could happen”. In fact, something unexpected happened during the Apollo 13 mission and Katherine helped, once the mission was aborted, to return the ship to Earth by implementing procedures and navigation charts.
She also participated in the Space Shuttle program and Mars mission plans until her retirement in 1986 after thirty-three years of service at NASA.
Katherine Johnson has received countless awards and recognitions throughout her life. Some of her twenty-six published articles are among the most important of NASA. She has received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest decoration awarded to a civilian in her country, as well as other awards such as Mathematician of the Year (1997) or the Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft and Operations Group Achievement Award (1967). In December 2016, the film Hidden Figures was released, based on the novel by Margot Lee Shetterly and where the life of Katherine and four other extraordinary women from NASA is told: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Christine Darden and Gloria Champine.
Until her death on February 24, 2020, Katherine dedicated herself to speaking with young people, especially women, about perseverance and the importance of fighting for dreams over any racial and gender discrimination, just as she did. She encouraged them to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) since, in her words:
“We will always have STEM with us. Some things will disappear from our sight, but there will always be science, engineering and technology. And always, always, there will be mathematics.”
Extracted from:
López, Aitziber (2016). “Katherine Johnson: “La calculadora humana””, Mujeres con ciencia, Universidad del país vasco, 09/04/2022, <https://mujeresconciencia.com/2016/12/12/katherine-johnson-la-calculadora-humana/>
