| Katherine Johnson | |
|---|---|
 | |
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Real Name |
Creola Katherine Johnson |
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Born |
August 26, 1918 |
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Died |
February 24, 2020 |
Origin[]
Creola Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician 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, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. 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 mission to Mars. She was known as a "human computer" for her tremendous mathematical capability and ability to work with space trajectories with such little technology and recognition at the time.
Coleman’s intelligence and skill with numbers became apparent when she was a child; by the time she was 10 years old, she had started attending high school. In 1937, at age 18, Coleman graduated with highest honours from West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University), earning bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and French. She subsequently moved to Virginia to take a teaching job. In 1939, however, she was selected to be one of the first three African American students to enroll in a graduate program at West Virginia University. She studied math there but soon left after marrying James Goble and deciding to start a family. He died in 1956, and three years later she married James Johnson.
In 1953 she began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)’s West Area Computing unit, a group of African American women who manually performed complex mathematical calculations for the program’s engineers. The women, known as the West Computers, analyzed test data and provided mathematical computations that were essential to the success of the early U.S. space program. During this time, NACA was segregated, and the West Computers had to use separate bathrooms and dining facilities. That changed in 1958 when NACA was incorporated into the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which banned segregation.
At NASA Johnson was a member of the Space Task Group. In 1960 she coauthored a paper with one of the group’s engineers about calculations for placing a spacecraft into orbit. It was the first time a woman in her division received credit as an author of a research report. Johnson authored or coauthored 26 research reports during her career.
Johnson also played an important role in NASA’s Mercury program (1961–63) of crewed spaceflights. In 1961 she calculated the path for Freedom 7, the spacecraft that put the first U.S astronaut in space, Alan B. Shepard, Jr. The following year, at the request of John Glenn, Johnson verified that the electronic computer had planned his flight correctly. Glenn subsequently made history aboard Friendship 7, becoming the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth. Johnson was also part of the team that calculated where and when to launch the rocket for the Apollo 11 mission of 1969, which sent the first three men to the Moon. Johnson later worked on the space shuttle program. She retired from NASA in 1986.
Notes[]
- The film Hidden Figures, released in December 2016, was based on the non-fiction book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly, which was published earlier that year. It follows Johnson and other female African-American mathematicians (Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan) who worked at NASA.