Image: NASA
“I don’t have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I’m as good as anybody, but no better.” This was famously quoted by Katherine Johnson, the remarkable African American woman who went above and beyond in the world of engineering, setting examples that reached limits beyond imaginable. Katherine Johnson was a mathematician extraordinaire who began keenly showing her talents in mathematics and numbers from an incredibly young age. Beginning in elementary school, Johnson performed so well she skipped ahead several grades. At age thirteen she began high school at an all-black high school in the town she grew up in: West Virginia. At age 18, after she finished high school, graduating with top honors, she enrolled herself in college at West Virginia University. Here she studied Mathematics and was mentored by the third African American woman ever to get their P.H.D in Mathematics, W. W Schieffelin Claytor. Again, Johnson performed above and beyond other women at this school and graduated top honors with a double degree in French and Mathematics.
Right after college she was offered a job at a local all black student high school to teach mathematics, which she eagerly accepted. During the time she was teaching, West Virginia had begun to develop a graduate program. Once finished building the program, Katherine Johnson along with two other black male students were asked to be the first of the students at this graduate school. Katherine took this opportunity with excitement, quite her teaching job and began studying at this new school. However, not too far into the first session, Johnson decided she wanted to take a different path and start a family with her first husband, James Golet. They together moved to NewPort West Virginia in hopes for a new start or maybe a better career opportunity for Johnson. Right after they moved, NACA reached out to Katherine Johnson and presented interest in her as a possible addition to their work force. She enthusiastically accepted this job and joined the West Area Computing Unit. The West Area Computing Unit was a group of African American woman specific to this unit, who were the one’s computing all the necessary space equations and data by hand. They did what computers do in todays age, but rather by hand calculations. According to a scholarly article by Joe Atkins, on the NASA website, he states “The engineers admit themselves that the girl computers do the work more rapidly and accurately then they could.”
Something that stood about about Katherine Johnson and deserves great respect and acknowledgement is her impact on the fight against segregation at NACA. During this time, segregation in the work place was very evident. In NACA, as well as nationwide, the bathrooms, cafeterias, and jobs were divided between men and woman. Johnson, while working at NACA, refused to eat in the segregated cafe’s and decided rather to eat at her desk. Similarly, she refused to use segregated restrooms and with that, ripped down the sign marking the restroom “colored woman” so that she could use an unmarked restroom.
Not long after this, Katherine Johnson heard that the engineers were having secret meetings, discussing the data and calculations that Katherine had been directly working on. Without invite, she boldly joined the meetings and is remembered as being completely engaged, fully attentive, just as if she were invited and another one of the white male engineers. The images below are from the outstanding move titled Hidden Figures, by the iconic director Theodore Melfi, and show a great depiction of her assertiveness in these meetings.
While Katherine was finally working with the engineers, and proving herself worthy of their listen, she began bringing up new ideas and correcting their logic and mathematical errors. As an African American woman, this was truly iconic. Some of her most honorable and impressive contributions to the space unit was her efforts on the Mercury Program that spanned from 1961-1963. Freedom 7 was the first spaceship to put a man on the moon. As seen below, Alan B. Shephard sits eagerly inside the spaceship capsule waiting for launch. Katherine helped calculate the launch angle, and several other necessary things to launch a spaceship into space. Along with her incredible help to the Mercury Program, in 1969 she made a remarkable impact on the Apollo 11 launch; helping calculate the launch speed, launch angle, and many other things.
Katherine Johnsons contributions have not gone unnoticed. In 2015 she was awarded with the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, as seen in the photograph below. This award is recognized by The Guardian as being “America’s highest civilian honour.” Along with this, NASA named a building after her, calling it the “Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility.” As portrayed in the image below, Johnson was honored with visiting the facility before her death, in February 24th, 2020, at age 101.
Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
Work Cited:
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Katherine Johnson. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Katherine-Johnson-mathematician.
Loff, S. (2016, November 22). Katherine Johnson Biography. NASA. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography.
The life of Katherine Johnson timeline. Timetoast timelines. (1918, August 26). Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-life-of-katherine-johnson.
Guardian News and Media. (2019, June 12). Hidden figures way: NASA Renames Street to honor black female mathematicians. The Guardian. Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/12/nasa-hidden-figures-street-renamed-black-female-mathematicians.
Gillard, E. (2017, September 23). NASA Langley’s Katherine Johnson Computational Research Facility opens. NASA. Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/nasa-langley-s-katherine-johnson-computational-research-facility-officially-opens.
Inspirational quotes: Katherine Johnson: NASA mathematician. WeAreTechWomen. (2020, March 5). Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://wearetechwomen.com/inspirational-quotes-katherine-johnson-nasa-mathematician/.
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