Katherine Johnson

Creola Katherine Johnson (née Coleman, previously Goble; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician and human computer whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform tasks previously requiring humans. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist". Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard (the first American in space) and John Glenn (the first American in orbit), and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a human mission to Mars. In 2015 President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she received the Silver Snoopy Award from NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, the United States Congress awarded Johnson the Congressional Gold Medal and NASA announced the establishment of the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in her home state of West Virginia. In 2021, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Early life Katherine Johnson was born Creola Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to Joylette Roberta (née Lowe) and Joshua McKinley Coleman. She was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman, farmer, and handyman. He also worked at the Greenbrier Hotel. Johnson showed strong mathematical ability from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African-American students beyond eighth grade, the Colemans arranged for their children to attend a high school in Institute, West Virginia, on the West Virginia State College (WVSC) campus; Johnson enrolled when she was ten years old. The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer.

After graduating from high school at age 14, Johnson matriculated at WVSC, a historically black college. She took every mathematics course the college offered. Several professors mentored her, including the chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King, who had guided Coleman throughout high school, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to receive a doctorate in mathematics. Claytor added new courses just for Johnson. In 1937, at age 18, she graduated summa cum laude with degrees in mathematics and French. Johnson was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She took a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia. In 1939 after marrying her first husband, James Goble, she left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate mathematics program. She quit at the end of the first session to focus on her family life. She was the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Through WVSC's president, John W. Davis, she became one of three African-American students, and the only woman, selected to integrate the graduate school after the 1938 United States Supreme Court ruling Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada required states that provide public higher education to white students to also provide it to black students by establishing black colleges and universities or by admitting black students to formerly white-only universities.

Career

After her daughters grew up, Johnson returned to teaching. In 1952, a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring for its West Area computing section. At the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, based in Hampton, Virginia, near Langley Field, NACA hired African-American mathematicians as well as whites for their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson accepted a job offer from the agency in June 1953. For Johnson to take the job, her family moved to Newport News. According to an oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project:

At first she [Johnson] worked in a pool of women performing mathematical calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual "computers who wore skirts". Their main job was to read the data from the plane's black boxes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine's knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that "they forgot to return me to the pool". While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before). She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged.

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