She also calculated the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission. Johnson worked as an aerospace technologist and even calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard. Their office was labeled as “Colored Computers.” In 1958 NASA adopted digital computers and desegregated! In keeping with state racial segregation laws, and federal workplace segregation rules that were in place at the time, Johnson and the other African-American women in the computing pool were required to work, eat, and use restrooms that were completely separate from those of their white peers. 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.”įrom 1953 through 1958, Johnson worked analyzing topics such as gust alleviation for aircraft. 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 says she ignored them. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. 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 black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. “At first she worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. NACA would later become NASA in 1958.Īccording to an oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project: She accepted and became part of the early NASA team. In 1953, NACA offered Johnson a job in the Guidance and Navigation Department at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. She taught school until 1952 when, at a family gathering, a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring mathematicians. If not for a court ordering the university’s desegregation, she would not have had the opportunity to earn her graduate degree and history might look very different.ĭespite her credentials, her job opportunities were mostly limited to teaching. A couple years later in 1939 she attended West Virginia University not only as one of the first African American students but also the very first woman. At age 18 she went to West Virginia State College – a historically African American College. Given her gifts and aptitude, her parents got her special schooling and she was able to graduate high school at 14. When Katherine was growing up there was no schooling for African American children past 8 th grade. Katherine, Dorothy and Mary all overcame a lack of educational resources, segregation, and gender bias in order to help launch the United States’ first man into Earth’s orbit. They were all African American women, who helped make the first missions into space a reality. The plot follows the story of Katherine Johnson and her fellow colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson.
Katherine johnson nasa wiki movie#
, via Wikimedia Commons”] There is a movie currently in theaters called “Hidden Figures” that reveals the hidden history of events we thought we knew so well. In fact, Glenn refused to do the mission unless Katherine did his calculations. She most notably known for verifying calculations done by new computing technology at the time of John Glenn’s first orbit around the Earth on NASA’s Friendship 7 flight. , via Wikimedia Commons”] You’ve probably heard of John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and Neil Armstrong, but have you heard of Katherine Johnson? She was an African American mathematician known as “the human computer” who worked from NASA in 1953.
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