Katherine Johnson was born August 26, 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The daughter of a school teacher and farmer, was the youngest of 4 children.

   From elementary school, Katherine excelled in mathematics, often taking courses well above her grade level. At this time in her town, African American children were not allowed to go to school past the sixth grade.

Pictured, a young Katherine Johnson

    Katherine was on pace to take algebra and geometry by age 10. In order for her to continue her education, her father moved their family over one hundred miles away to Institute, WV.

   Here, she attended the high school that also offered college mathematics courses. By time she was 18 years old, Katherine graduated from West Virginia State University with a degree in Math and French.

    After graduating from college, she initially took a job as a school teacher. There were not many jobs for African American women during the 1930's. 

    In 1940, she was selected as one of three black students to study in a graduate level program at West Virginia University. But after getting married and having several children, she returned home and continued teaching.

Katherine Johnson with her daughters.

    In 1952, Katherine heard there were job openings at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) at Langley Air Force Base in Newport News, Virginia.

    In that day, women with mathematics degrees were hired to relieve the male engineers of the tedious work of crunching numbers by hand, although they were paid much less than the men. 

    Katherine Johnson quickly became known for expert skills and was a permanent fixture in the  Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, where she spent the next four years analyzing data from flight tests. 

    The late 1950s changed Katherine's life forever. Her husband passed away from brain cancer and the US was deep in the Space Race with the Soviet Union (Russia). In 1958, NACA also merged with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which banned segregation.

    This meant bathrooms, offices, water fountains, and cafeterias were no longer separated by race. 

    Katherine remained humble but did not let her gender or race keep her from achieving her dreams. She was a "computer wearing a skirt."

Katherine Johnson, surrounded by her white, male counterparts, from the film Hidden Figures.

She was not a computer like we are used to. That was the term used for people who actually do the computing, or calculating for the flight paths of rockets.

   One of her most notable assignments was in 1961, to manually calculate the flight path for Freedom 7, which carried Alan Shepard as the first American in space.

    Her calculations could mean life or death for our first astronaut, but his mission went off without a hitch, thanks to Katherine's perfect math.

   Her success earned her a spot on the team for Friendship 7, in which astronaut John Glenn orbited the Earth 3 times. Johnson was responsible for calculating the rocket's trajectory from liftoff to landing. She had to factor in the weather and other atmospheric conditions to find the perfect coordinates for John Glenn to land safely. 

    She was still working at Langley in Virginia, but sent her calculations to Cape Canaveral, Florida. At this time, real computers were making their way into NASA's space program. Many people were fearful of the new electronic machines, and didn't trust them to calculate, program, and control the rockets.

     During a preflight check, Glenn hand-picked Katherine Johnson and told engineers to "go get the girl." He wanted her to double check the computer and run the numbers and equations by hand. "If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go." 

    John Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in the space race.

Katherine Johnson with an early IBM computer.

    As NASA continued to race against the USSR for a place in the history books, Katherine Johnson remained a huge part of their success story.

       Apollo 11, the crown jewel of NASA, was a mission that cemented the USA into world history. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and walked on the moon

in the summer of 1969, it was Katherine's mathematical skills that got them there. She was a part of the team who was responsible for calculating when and where to launch the rocket.

    Years later, when Apollo 13 had to unexpectedly slingshot around the moon and return home after an oxygen tank exploded on board, they called out "Houston, we have a problem"; it was Katherine's calculations that allowed them to safely re-enter Earth's atmosphere and splash down in the South Pacific Ocean.

    In the late 1960's, NASA developed a plan to launch reusable spacecraft, instead of disposable rockets. This is what we know as the modern day space shuttle program. Katherine Johnson worked as a computer on these teams as well.

    Katherine Johnson continued working at NASA until she retired from her position at Langley in 1986. Over the course of her 33 year career, she received numerous awards for her contributions.

Katherine Johnson was the first woman, black or white, to author a research report at NASA. During her tenure, she authored or co-authored 26 research reports.