Author’s Note: On February 24th, 2020, as I was making the final edits on this article I got a news update on my cellphone. Today, at the spectacular age of 101-years-old, N.A.S.A. mathematician, focus of the 2016 film Hidden Figures, and recipient of the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom, Katherine G. Johnson passed away in her nursing home in Virginia.
Born on August 26th, 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, W.V., Creola Katherine Coleman was a scholar from her earliest days. She had finished high school by the age of 14-years-old, and University by the time she was 18. Education wasn’t easy to come by for Black people in West Virginia in the 1930s, and White Sulphur Springs only had schools for Black children up to sixth grade. So every autumn Johnson’s father would move his family - Johnson is the youngest of four children in her family - to an integrated institute that would educate his children.
After receiving her Bachelor of Science from West Virginia State College in 1936, Johnson enrolled in a graduate mathematics program at the same school. One year into her second degree Katherine dropped out because she had fallen pregnant and wanted to focus on raising her family. She took a teaching job at a local school and went on to have two more children.
In 1953 Katherine Johnson joined what is now known as N.A.S.A., and became part of the all-Black computing section at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Memorial Library. Johnson said she never “had a sense of inferiority” during her time at N.A.S.A. and she went on to repeatedly prove her capabilities during her 33-year-long career with the institution.
Johnson calculated the exact trajectories to get man into space, and to the moon. Working in the Flight Research Division, she was responsible for getting John Glenn into space on the Friendship 7, got Neil Armstrong and Apollo II to the moon and back in 1969, and Alan B. Shepard Jr. the first American astronaut into space.
She, like most other “computers”, a term that refers to the women who did the mathematical equations needed at N.A.S.A., was largely unaccredited for her work at the time. Johnson had the misfortune of suffering both gender-based and racially-based discrimination that was even more prominent in the 1950s than it is today.
Katherine Johnson, along with fellow mathematicians Dorothy Vaughan (September 20, 1910 – November 10, 2008) and Mary Jackson (April 9, 1921,- February 11th, 2005), were the three main characters in the 2015 film Hidden Figures. Johnson was the only one of the three still alive at the time the film was released. The movie was nominated for three Academy Awards, and despite not receiving an award Johnson did receive a standing ovation at the Awards ceremony.
The following year Johnson was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian can receive, by President Barack Obama. During the award ceremony, President Obama said “Katherine G. Johnson refused to be limited to society’s expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach.” In an article about her win, The Washington Post referred to her as “the most high-profile of all the N.A.S.A. computers.”
In her lifetime Johnson was the recipient of many awards and accolades. For instance in the years 1971, 1980, 1984, 1985, and 1986 she received the N.A.S.A. Langley Research Center Special Achievement award. In 1998 she was presented with an Honorary Doctor of Laws from S.U.N.Y. Farmingdale. In 1999 she was West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year, In 2014 she received the De Pizan Honor from National Women's History Museum. She also had multiple facilities in her name, such as N.A.S.A.’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility. As recently as November of 2019 she was presented with a Congressional Gold Medal.
Written By: Devon Clare Banfield
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