#Katherine johnson nasa scientist professional#

“If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go,” Johnson recalled the astronaut saying. As part of the pre-flight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl” – referring to Johnson – insisting that she run the numbers through the same equations by hand to check the computer’s calculations. The agency was relying on a network of computers, programmed with orbital equations that would control the trajectory of Glenn’s capsule. Less than a year later, NASA was preparing for the mission that would see Glenn become the first US astronaut to orbit Earth in February 1962. In May 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first US citizen and second person in the world to go to space. Meanwhile, at NACA (which had since become NASA), Johnson had been working on the trajectory analysis for the US’s first human space flight. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 – the first artificial Earth satellite – and in April 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to journey into space and orbit Earth. At the same time, the space race between the US and the Soviet Union was heating up. Over the next four years, she worked alongside aeronautical engineers analysing data from flight tests. Within two weeks of working at Langley, Johnson’s talent landed her a position in the Flight Research Division. Johnson refused to use the “colored” toilets and ate lunch at her desk. In addition to the computing pool, the toilets and cafeteria at Langley were also racially segregated at the time. Please return to AJC.com for updates.In 1953, Johnson started working at the all-Black West Area Computing section of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which would later become the space agency NASA. “They didn’t have time to be concerned about what color I was.” Johnson told The Observer of Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 2010.

#Katherine johnson nasa scientist professional#

“NASA was a very professional organization,” Mrs.

Over time, Johnson's work won her acceptance within the agency despite her race, The Times reported. The white women in turn were segregated from the agency’s male mathematicians and engineers, according to The New York Times. The New York Times said Johnson described NASA in the 1960s as “a time when computers wore skirts.”įor some years at midcentury, the black women who worked as “computers” were subjected to a double segregation: Consigned to separate office, dining and bathroom facilities, they were kept separate from the much larger group of white women who also worked as NASA mathematicians.

Johnson Computational Research Facility, at its Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.Īlso in 2017, Clark Atlanta University awarded Johnson an honorary degree. In 2017, NASA dedicated a building to her, the Katherine G. President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to NASA mathematician and physicist Katherine Johnson at the White House in Washington, DC, on November 24, 2015. Joe Manchin of West Virginia also paid tribute to Johnson on Twitter on Monday. Although “Hidden Figures” did not win, Johnson received a standing ovation at the 2017 Academy Awards as she appeared onstage with the cast. The film was nominated for three Oscars, including best picture. She went to work for it in 1953 and remained until 1986.ĭespite her contributions to the space program, nearly no one outside the agency knew Johnson’s name, but the film changed that, bringing her out of the shadows for millions of new admirers. She got a job as a teacher before hearing that the government agency, which later became NASA, was looking for mathematicians to solve complex math problems related to flight in the age before computers. Johnson was a West Virginia whiz kid, going to high school at 10 and graduating from college at 18. Her calculations were also used to land Apollo 11 on the moon in 1969 and then returned it safely to Earth.

NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson is photographed at her desk at NASA Langley Research Center with a globe, or 'Celestial Training Device.'