Katherine Johnson

• Name — Katherine Johnson • Birth Name — Creola Katherine Coleman • Born — 26 August 1918 • Birthplace — White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, U.S. • Died — 24 February 2020 • Place of death — Newport News, Virginia, U.S. • Other Names — Katherine Goble • Education — West Virginia State University (BS) • Occupation — Mathematician, human computer, computer programmer, mathematics teacher • Employer — * NACA • NASA (1953–1986) • Known for — Calculating trajectories for NASA missions • Children — 3 • Awards — * Presidential Medal of Freedom (2015) • Silver Snoopy Award (2016) • NASA Group Achievement Award (2016) • Congressional Gold Medal (2019) • Website — https: katherinejohnson.net Creola Katherine Johnson (Coleman, previously Goble; August 26, 1918February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician and human computer 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, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform tasks previously requiring humans. 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 human mission to Mars. In 2015 President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she received the Silver Snoopy Award from NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, the United States Congress awarded Johnson the Congressional Gold Medal and NASA announced the establishment of the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in her home state of West Virginia. In 2021, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Katherine Johnson was born Creola Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to Joylette Roberta (née Lowe) and Joshua McKinley Coleman. She was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman, farmer, and handyman. He also worked at the Greenbrier Hotel. Johnson showed strong mathematical ability from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African-American students beyond eighth grade, the Colemans arranged for their children to attend a high school in Institute, West Virginia, on the West Virginia State College (WVSC) campus; Johnson enrolled when she was ten years old. The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer. After graduating from high school at age 14, Johnson matriculated at WVSC, a historically black college. She took every mathematics course the college offered. Several professors mentored her, including the chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King, who had guided Coleman throughout high school, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to receive a doctorate in mathematics. Claytor added new courses just for Johnson. In 1937, at age 18, she graduated summa cum laude with degrees in mathematics and French. Johnson was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She took a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia. In 1939 after marrying her first husband, James Goble, she left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate mathematics program. She quit at the end of the first session to focus on her family life. She was the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Through WVSC's president, John W. Davis, she became one of three African-American students, and the only woman, selected to integrate the graduate school after the 1938 United States Supreme Court ruling Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada required states that provide public higher education to white students to also provide it to black students by establishing black colleges and universities or by admitting black students to formerly white-only universities.

• Illustration — Johnson working at the Spacecraft Controls Branch of NASA in 1966. After her daughters grew up, Johnson returned to teaching. In 1952, a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring for its West Area computing section. At the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, based in Hampton, Virginia, near Langley Field, NACA hired African-American mathematicians as well as whites for their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson accepted a job offer from the agency in June 1953. For Johnson to take the job, her family moved to Newport News. According to an oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project: From 1953 to 1958 Johnson worked as a computer, performing calculations for topics like gust alleviation for aircraft. Originally assigned to the West Area Computers section supervised by Dorothy Vaughan, Johnson was reassigned to the Guidance and Control Division of Langley's Flight Research Division. It was staffed by white male engineers. In keeping with the State of Virginia's racial segregation laws and federal workplace segregation introduced under President Woodrow Wilson, Johnson and the other African-American women in the computing pool were required to work, eat, and use restrooms in separate facilities from those of their white colleagues. Their office was labeled "Colored Computers". In an interview with WHRO-TV, Johnson said she "didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job [...] and play bridge at lunch." She added: "I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it." NACA disbanded the colored computing pool in 1958 when the agency was superseded by NASA, which adopted digital computers. Although the installation was desegregated, forms of discrimination were still pervasive. Johnson recalled: • Illustration — The first NASA report showing Johnson's name as co-author. From 1958 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson worked as a computer for NACA's successor, the Spacecraft Controls Branch. She calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961, space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She also calculated the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission. She plotted backup navigation charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures. When NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around earth, officials asked Johnson to verify the computer's numbers; Glenn had asked for her specifically and had refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations. As a computer, she calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard, the first American in space...John Glenn requested that she personally recheck the calculations...before his flight aboard Friendship 7...on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth. Author Margot Lee Shetterly wrote, "So the astronaut who became a hero looked to this black woman in the still-segregated South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success." She added that, in a time when computing was "women's work" and engineering was left to men, "it really does have to do with us over the course of time sort of not valuing that work that was done by women, however necessary, as much as we might. And it has taken history to get a perspective on that." Johnson later worked directly with digital computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped establish confidence in the new technology. In 1961, her work helped to ensure that Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 Mercury capsule was found quickly after landing, using the accurate trajectory that had been established. • Illustration — Johnson in 2008 She also helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. During the Moon landing, Johnson was at a meeting in the Pocono Mountains. She and a few others crowded around a small television screen watching the first steps on the Moon. In 1970, Johnson worked on the Apollo 13 Moon mission. When the mission was aborted, her work on backup procedures and charts helped set a safe path for the crew's return to Earth, creating a one-star observation system to allow astronauts to determine their location accurately. In a 2010 interview, Johnson recalled, "Everybody was concerned about them getting there. We were concerned about them getting back." Later in her career, she worked on the Space Shuttle program, the Earth Resources Satellite, and on plans for a human mission to Mars. Johnson spent her later years encouraging students to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Katherine and James Francis Goble had three daughters. The family lived in Newport News, Virginia, from 1953. James died of an inoperable brain tumor in 1956 and in 1959 Katherine married James A. "Jim" Johnson, a United States Army officer and veteran of the Korean War; they were married for 60 years, until his death in 2019 at age 93. Johnson, who had six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, lived in Hampton, Virginia. She encouraged her grandchildren and students to pursue careers in science and technology. For 50 years Johnson was a member of Carver Memorial Presbyterian Church, where she sang as part of the choir. Johnson died at a Newport News retirement home on February 24, 2020, at age 101. After her death, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine called her "an American hero" and said "her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten."

The film Hidden Figures, released in December 2016, is based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same title, which was published earlier that year. It follows Johnson and the other African-American women, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, who worked as computers at NASA. Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson. Appearing alongside Henson at the 89th Academy Awards, Johnson received a standing ovation from the audience. In an earlier interview, Johnson said of the movie: "It was well done. The three leading ladies did an excellent job portraying us." In the 2016 episode "Space Race" of the NBC series Timeless, Johnson is portrayed by Nadine Ellis.