Katherine Johnson (1918-2020) was an American mathematician whose orbital calculations at NASA underpinned the first American human spaceflights. Working as one of the agency's "human computers" at Langley Research Center in Virginia, she computed the trajectory for Alan Shepard's 1961 suborbital flight, hand-verified the computer-generated orbit for John Glenn's 1962 mission at Glenn's personal request, and contributed to the Apollo 11 lunar landing and the Apollo 13 rescue.[1][2]
Johnson did this work as a Black woman in the segregated Virginia of the 1950s, beginning in a separate computing pool for African American women before her skill in analytical geometry moved her into the previously all-male, all-white Flight Research Division. Her contributions went largely unrecognized outside NASA until late in her life, when the 2016 book and film "Hidden Figures" made her the best-known of the agency's early Black mathematicians. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.[1][3]
She retired from NASA in 1986 after 33 years and died in 2020 at age 101.[2]
Early life and education
Creola Katherine Coleman was born on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the youngest of four children. Her aptitude showed early; she recalled counting everything, "the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed." Because her county offered no public schooling for Black children past the eighth grade, her father moved the family 120 miles each school year so the children could attend the laboratory high school on the campus of West Virginia State College.[1][2]
She entered the college itself at 15 and graduated summa cum laude at 18, in 1937, with degrees in mathematics and French. Mathematician W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, created advanced courses specifically for her. In 1939 she was one of three Black students, and the only woman, selected to integrate West Virginia University's graduate programs, though she left after one session to start a family. She taught in Black public schools before joining the Langley laboratory.[1][2]
Human computer at Langley
In June 1953 Johnson was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA's predecessor, into the West Area Computing unit at Langley, a pool of African American women mathematicians led by Dorothy Vaughan who performed calculations by hand for the laboratory's engineers under Virginia's segregation rules. Two weeks into the job she was loaned to the all-male Flight Research Division to analyze flight test data, and the assignment became permanent.[1][2]
Her early work included analysis of aircraft flight data and a study of wake turbulence following a small plane crash. When the Space Race began, the division turned to spaceflight, and Johnson's command of analytic geometry made her central to the new problems of orbital mechanics. In 1960 she and engineer Ted Skopinski co-authored a report on placing a satellite over a chosen point on Earth, the first time a woman in the division received author credit on a research report.[2]
Mercury: Shepard and Glenn
Johnson calculated the trajectory for Freedom 7, the May 5, 1961, flight that made Alan Shepard the first American in space. The mission was suborbital, a 15-minute arc into the Atlantic, and Johnson's analysis tied the launch conditions to the splashdown point.[2][3]
Her most repeated story came with John Glenn's orbital flight on February 20, 1962. The mission's trajectories were computed by IBM electronic computers, then new and not fully trusted. During preflight preparations Glenn asked engineers to "get the girl" to run the same equations by hand on her desktop calculating machine. "If she says they're good," Johnson recalled him saying, "then I'm ready to go." The verification took a day and a half; the numbers matched, Glenn flew, and Friendship 7's three orbits made him a national hero.[2][4]
Apollo 11 and Apollo 13
Johnson moved from Mercury to the Apollo program, working on the calculations that synchronized the lunar module with the command module orbiting the Moon, work essential to the rendezvous that brought Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin back from the surface in July 1969. She later said she was proudest of those Apollo 11 rendezvous calculations.[1][2]
When an oxygen tank explosion crippled Apollo 13 in April 1970, Johnson contributed to the backup procedures and star-observation charts that let the crew navigate on a free-return path around the Moon after the mission's normal systems were shut down to save power. Her later Langley work included the Space Shuttle program and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (later Landsat) before her retirement in 1986.[1][2]
Key contributions
| Year | Mission or program | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| 1961 | Mercury-Redstone 3 (Shepard) | Trajectory analysis for first American spaceflight |
| 1962 | Mercury-Atlas 6 (Glenn) | Hand verification of computer-generated orbital trajectory |
| 1969 | Apollo 11 | Rendezvous calculations for lunar module and command module |
| 1970 | Apollo 13 | Backup navigation procedures and charts |
| 1970s-1986 | Space Shuttle, Landsat | Analysis and planning work until retirement |
Recognition and Hidden Figures
For most of her career Johnson's name was known mainly inside NASA. That changed in her nineties. On November 24, 2015, President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor. The following year Margot Lee Shetterly's book "Hidden Figures" and its film adaptation, in which Taraji P. Henson played Johnson, told the story of the Black women mathematicians of Langley; the film earned three Academy Award nominations, and the 98-year-old Johnson received a standing ovation at the 2017 Oscars ceremony.[1][3][4]
NASA named the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at Langley in her honor in 2017, renamed its independent verification and validation facility in West Virginia for her in 2019, and Congress awarded her a Congressional Gold Medal the same year. A Northrop Grumman cargo spacecraft flown to the International Space Station in 2021 was christened SS Katherine Johnson.[1][2]
Death and legacy
Johnson died on February 24, 2020, in Newport News, Virginia, at 101. NASA's administrator called her "an American hero" whose "pioneering legacy will never be forgotten"; the agency's own assessment is blunter and more specific, crediting her calculations as critical to the success of the first U.S. crewed spaceflights.[2][3] Asked about her place in a segregated workplace, Johnson tended to redirect attention to the work: "I was just doing my job," she said, adding that she "counted everything" and asked questions until she understood. Her story is now standard in accounts of how the American space program actually functioned, and in arguments for who gets counted in it.[3][4]
References
- Katherine Johnson - Wikipedia.
- Katherine Johnson Biography - NASA.
- Katherine Johnson (1918-2020) - NASA Science.
- Katherine Johnson, the Hidden Figures Mathematician Who Got Astronaut John Glenn Into Space - IEEE Spectrum.
