“In her 33 years at NASA, Katherine was a pioneer who broke the barriers of race and gender, showing generations of young people that everyone can excel in math and science, and reach for the stars,” Obama said. President Barack Obama awarded her the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, at a 2015 White House ceremony. Johnson did calculations for the first moon landing, and later for the space shuttle program. “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,” she told NPR in 2016. Margot Lee Shetterly wrote the book Hidden Figures and said that Glenn considered Johnson’s calculations part of his preflight checklist. And if she says the computer is right, I’ll take it,’ ” she recalled. “But when he got ready to go, he said, ‘Call her. “Everybody there was doing research,” she recalled in later years, “You had a mission and you worked on it.”īefore John Glenn flew Friendship 7 in 1962, becoming the first American to orbit Earth, he asked Johnson to double-check the math of the “new electronic” computations. She initially became a teacher but, in 1953, took a job at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics - the agency that would become NASA. She graduated from high school at 14 and finished college with degrees in math and French from historically black West Virginia State College. As a young girl, she was fascinated by numbers and it was clear early on she was gifted. Johnson was born in West Virginia in 1918. “Her story and her grace continue to inspire the world.” “The NASA family will never forget Katherine Johnson’s courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her,” Bridenstine wrote on Twitter. Her death was announced by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
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She calculated the flight path for America’s first crewed space mission and moon landing, and she was among the women profiled in the book and movie Hidden Figures.
Melvin, and a NASA Group Achievement Award.Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who was one of NASA’s human “computers” and an unsung hero of the space agency’s early days, died Monday. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Silver Snoopy Award from NASA astronaut Leland D. Towards the end of her life, these contributions began to receive the recognition they deserve. She also contributed to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program and worked on plans for a mission to Mars.
The highlights? Calculations for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit - not to mention rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the moon. There, she calculated trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights. “You lose your curiosity when you stop learning.”īy 1958, she had moved into the Spacecraft Controls Branch. The space agency refers to her historical role as “one of the first African American women to work as a NASA scientist.”
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A Rocketing Careerĭuring her 33-year career at NASA (and its predecessor NACA), she earned herself a reputation for acing complex manual calculations and pioneering the use of computers. Johnson accepted a job offer from the agency in June 1953 and was initially assigned to Dorothy Vaughan’s group. At a family gathering in 1952, a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring mathematicians - including African Americans. She began working as a teacher, but her life would soon change dramatically. By 1937, she graduated from West Virginia State with degrees in mathematics and French at the age of just 18. Although Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African American students past the eighth grade, her parents were determined to support her talent and enrolled her at a high school in Institute, West Virginia when she was 10 - splitting their time between there and their home in White Sulphur Springs. spaceflights into orbit.įrom an early age, Johnson revealed amazing mathematical abilities. Creola Katherine Johnson (1918–2020) was a talented African American mathematician and NASA employee whose calculations helped set the first crewed U.S.
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