Woman of the Week – Katherine Johnson

When honored by People magazine as one of 25 Women Changing the World, Katherine Johnson spoke of her accomplishments as “ordinary.”

I think it’s safe to say they are anything but that.

Born in 1918 in small White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, her intelligence and thirst for learning was apparent at an early age. Her father recognized his daughter’s potential and moved the family over 100 miles so she could attend high school.

In school, Johnson fell in love with numbers and math. She took every math course she could and graduated high school at just 14. She enrolled at just 10, and graduation was seen as a truly amazing feat for her. She grew up in an era when school for African-Americans normally stopped at eighth grade.

“I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed … anything that could be counted, I did,” she said in a NASA interview.

After spending her early adult years as a teacher and later as a stay-at-home mom, she began working for NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA.

NACA had taken the then-unusual step of hiring women for the tedious and precise work of measuring and calculating the results of wind tunnel tests in 1935. In a time before the electronic computers we know today, these women had the job title of “computer,” meaning to compute by hand.

NACA took another unusual step for the time, hiring African-American women. In time, there became even more of a need for people to do computing work, and Johnson fit the bill.

By 1953, the growing demands of early space research meant there were openings for African-American computers at Langley Research Center’s Guidance and Navigation Department – and she found the perfect place to put her extraordinary mathematical skills to work.

She worked with other women performing math calculations until she was temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team, and ended up staying there. Her specialty was calculating the trajectories for space shots which determined the timing for launches, including the Mercury mission and Apollo 11, the mission to the moon.

It was this work that she is most known for.

As a computer, she calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Even after NASA began using electronic computers, John Glenn requested that she personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight aboard Friendship 7 – that’s the mission where he became the first American to orbit the Earth.

Her calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program and the start of the Space Shuttle program, her work was very important for many “firsts” in the field of space exploration.

Johnson has earned a number of honors for her work, from the 1967 NASA Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft and Operations team, to the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Barack H. Obama. She was the recipient of the 2015 National Medal of Freedom.

Johnson also worked closely with Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, both extraordinary scientists in their own right. Next month, the film “Hidden Figures” will premiere. The movie will document the women’s work on one of the most important space launches in history.

The movie documents the careers of the three women, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The launch was a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence and turned around the Space Race during the Cold War.

Sources:

https://www.makers.com/blog/women-behind-hidden-figures-movie

https://www.businessinsider.com/katherine-johnson-hidden-figures-nasa-human-computers-2016-8/#and-while-the-female-computers-werent-given-the-same-respect-as-male-engineers-that-never-fazed-johnson-girls-are-capable-of-doing-everything-men-are-capable-of-doing-sometimes-they-have-more-imagination-than-men-she-said-in-a-2011-interview-men-dont-pay-attention-to-small-things-they-arent-interested-in-how-you-do-it-just-in-give-me-the-answer-11

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/katherine-johnson-the-girl-who-loved-to-count