Johnson’s contributions included plotting backup navigation charts for astronauts to use in the event of electronic failures.
KATHERINE JOHNSON NASA MATHEMATICIAN HOW TO
“You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it.” “Our office computed all the trajectories,” Johnson explained in a 2012 interview with the Virginian-Pilot newspaper. Johnson’s career took on new and far more daunting dimensions when became was reassigned to NASA’s Guidance and Control Division, to help work on plans for the first spaceflights of American astronauts. Her efforts in this regard were concentrated on such topics as gust alleviation for airplanes. As part of a racially segregated computing unit in that department, Johnson worked on various mathematical analyses by hand. Johnson began work at NACA in its Guidance and Navigation Department.
This ultimately led her to be hired in 1953 as a mathematician at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which was succeeded by NASA in 1958. Johnson became focused on a career in mathematical research. Johnson was the first African-African woman to attend graduate school at that university. Eventually, however, she enrolled as a graduate student at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Johnson went on to teach at an African-American public school in Marion, Virginia. Johnson graduated summa cum laude in 1937 with degrees in both mathematics and French. She took every math course that the college had to offer. She counted the distance to the church.”Īfter graduating from high school when she was only 14, Johnson attended West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University).
“Growing up in West Virginia, Katherine Johnson counted everything,” Obama noted during the 2015 ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her strong interest in and expertise in math was evident at a very young age. Johnson was born on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. He said, “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.” President Barack Obama, when presenting Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, highlighted the significance of her achievements on behalf of space exploration. Henson, with Octavia Spencer playing the part of Vaughan and Janelle Monáe appearing as Jackson.) Hidden Figures was based on a book of the same name that had been written by Margot Lee Shetterly.Īs a NASA mathematician, Johnson’s own critical role involved calculating rocket trajectories and Earth orbits to ensure the success of early U.S. (Johnson was portrayed in that Oscar-nominated film by Taraji P. Katherine Johnson was one of the pioneering National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) African-American females to be featured, along with supervisor and mathematician Dorothy Vaughan and engineer Mary Jackson, in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
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