Meet Katherine Johnson
Despite the systematic challenges stacked against her, Katherine Johnson will forever be known as one of NASA’s most valuable mathematicians.
Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 in West Virginia as the youngest child of four. Katherine showed a fascination with numbers from a very young age and was always excited to attend school. Despite the town Katherine lived in not offering schooling for colored children beyond the eighth grade, she was enrolled in a high school outside her town at age 10 and graduated at age 14. At age 18, Katherine graduated from West Virginia State College with high honors, earning her degree in mathematics.
After pursuing a teaching position at a local black public school in Virginia, Katherine decided to leave her job to attend graduate school, as one of three African Americans chosen to integrate West Virginia’s graduate school following a court ruling declaring that higher education must be offered to both white and colored individuals. In 1953, Katherine started working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in their West Computing Unit. This segregated unit for African American women who analyzed test data and provided manual mathematical computations was commonly known as the “computers
In 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established, along with a ban on segregation within the workplace. Katherine was a member of NASA’s space task group and would go on to contribute to many famous space exploration accomplishments. In 1961, Katherine calculated the path needed to put the first astronaut in space and orbit the Earth in the United States Space Capsule “Freedom 7”. Along with this, in 1969, Katherine also contributed to the calculations needed to launch the rocket for the first three men sent to the moon during the Apollo Space Mission. Katherine’s accomplishments did not go unrecognized. In 2015, Katherine was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for all of her hard work and numerous achievements despite her challenging circumstances.
Katherine Johnson is a role model for all aspiring to create change and is the epitome of resilience. Despite being at a systematic disadvantage with the educational and occupational limitations as a woman of color during her upbringing, Katherine continued to inspire others and create lasting impacts within her community and field.
Adapted from following sources by Intern, S. Stewart: Britannica.com/biography/Katherine-Johnson and https://cst.princeton.edu/people/Katherine-Johnson