Unsung hero of the space race
Katherine Johnson NASA mathematician BORN AUGUST 26, 1918 – DIED FEBRUARY 24, 2020, AGED 101
KATHERINE Johnson was the mathematics genius whose calculations enabled the first Americans to go into space.
The African-American’s achievements went largely unnoticed until the release of the 2016 film, Hidden Lives, based on her life story.
Johnson’s pioneering work determined space orbit trajectories and emergency return routes for some of history’s most famous astronauts, including Neil Armstrong’s mission to the moon.
She was based in a segregated computing unit that became NASA in 1958 and was promoted to the administration’s all-male, all-white Space Task Group the same year.
That team was responsible for launching Alan Shepard as the first US astronaut in space in 1961.
Her ability was so valued that John Glenn personally requested she calculate the trajectory of his orbit around the Earth in 1962.
She was born the youngest of four children inWhite Sulphur Springs,WestVirginia. Her father, Joshua, was a lumberman who was good with numbers, while her mother Joylette was a teacher.
Johnson’s skill in maths became apparent early on and she graduated from school aged 14 and university four years later.
Her early career was spent as a teacher before she discovered black female mathematicians were being recruited by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA. She was put to work as a
“human computer” but as a female was treated as inferior to her male counterparts.
Speaking about that era, Johnson said: “We needed to be assertive and aggressive as women in those days and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were.”