“I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed… anything that could be counted, I did.” “I counted everything,” she recalled near the end of her life. But it was clear from an early age that Johnson was special. She grew up in a modest household with three older siblings and a mother, Joylette Coleman, who was a school teacher and a father, Joshua Coleman, who was a farmer. 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. NASA Johnson’s complex calculations were instrumental in many of NASA’s successful space missions, including the 1969 moon landing.īefore Katherine Johnson became one of NASA’s most valuable mathematicians and earned the nickname “Human Computer,” she was born Creola Katherine Coleman on Aug. “I Counted Everything”: Katherine Johnson’s Early Life By the time she ultimately passed away at the age of 101 in February 2020, her deserved place in history was secure. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom and her work was immortalized in the Academy Award-nominated film Hidden Figures the following year. Yet, for most of her career, these accomplishments went largely ignored.Īs a black female scientist in a white man’s world, Johnson worked tirelessly and often thanklessly to make calculations that put some of history’s first astronauts into space - while facing bigotry from all sides.īut in the decades following her retirement, Johnson’s legacy of peerless perseverance and intelligence gradually received the recognition it always warranted. Starting in the 1950s, her invaluable mathematical calculations had helped push NASA’s space exploration to untold heights. When Katherine Johnson retired from NASA in 1986, she capped off an astonishing career as one of the most invaluable “computers” in the history of the agency. To see more, visit NPR.NASA/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images Katherine Johnson at her desk while working for NASA in 1962. She got a standing ovation at the Academy Awards in 2017 and NASA named the Computational Research Facility in her honor.Ĭopyright 2020 NPR. Johnson’s accomplishments continued to be highlighted later in life. “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,” Obama said. President Barack Obama awarded her the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, at a 2015 White House ceremony. Johnson did calculations for the first moon landing, and later for the space shuttle program. “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 told NPR in 2016. Margot Lee Shetterly wrote the book Hidden Figures and said that Glenn considered Johnson’s calculations part of his preflight checklist. And if she says the computer is right, I’ll take it,’ ” she recalled. “But when he got ready to go, he said, ‘Call her. “Everybody there was doing research,” she recalled in later years, “You had a mission and you worked on it.”īefore John Glenn flew Friendship 7 in 1962, becoming the first American to orbit Earth, he asked Johnson to double-check the math of the “new electronic” computations. She initially became a teacher but, in 1953, took a job at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics - the agency that would become NASA. She graduated from high school at 14 and finished college with degrees in math and French from historically black West Virginia State College. As a young girl, she was fascinated by numbers and it was clear early on she was gifted. Johnson was born in West Virginia in 1918. “Her story and her grace continue to inspire the world.” “The NASA family will never forget Katherine Johnson’s courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her,” Bridenstine wrote on Twitter. Her death was announced by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. ![]() She calculated the flight path for America’s first crewed space mission and moon landing, and she was among the women profiled in the book and movie Hidden Figures. Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who was one of NASA’s human “computers” and an unsung hero of the space agency’s early days, died Monday.
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