Lesson 3 Beyond Barriers
Katherine Johnson, a “Computer” Who Looked Beyond Numbers
Katherine Johnson was born on August 26, 1918, in West Virginia, in the U.S., and was the youngest of four children in a black family.
Katherine was a math prodigy from early childhood.
Reflecting on her youth, Katherine once said, “I counted everything—the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes, spoons, and forks I washed.”
She excitedly added, “I couldn’t wait to get to high school to take algebra and geometry.”
But Katherine’s hometown had a segregated education system, and black students could not enter high school.
So her father moved the family 200 kilometers away so that she could enter high school.
After graduating from high school in 1932, she was admitted to a black college at the age of fifteen.
By her junior year, she had taken all the math courses the college could offer.
Her mentor gladly offered special classes just for her, but he was not happy when he had to tell his outstanding student about her career opportunities.
“You would make a good research mathematician,” he told his seventeen-year-old student, “and I’m going to prepare you for this career.”
Katherine asked, “Where will I find a job?”
“That,” he replied, “will be your problem.”
The path ahead was unclear and full of obstacles, but Katherine knew she had the strength to make her own way.
In 1935
In 1935, at the age of eighteen, Katherine graduated from college with highest honors and began her career as a teacher at a black public school.
At that time, teaching was the only option available to her.
It was not until 1953 that Katherine found a job at a NASA field center in Virginia.
There, she worked as one of the “Black computers” who did complex calculations manually to support white male engineers.
Though they greatly contributed to the space project, they endured a lot of discrimination, including segregation in the office and being referred to with terms like “girl” despite being professional women.
Two weeks into the job, Katherine was reassigned to NASA’s elite space research division.
There, she was the only black female member of the staff.
Despite her enormous contributions, the important research meetings were held only among white staff members.
When she asked for permission to attend the meetings, her male colleagues said that “the girls” didn’t usually go.
Katherine asked, “Is there a law that says I can’t go?”
The embarrassed male workers had no choice but to let her in.
By asking questions no one had ever asked, Katherine ended a discriminatory custom.
She had faced barriers, but her efforts to overcome them paid off.
She felt proud and continued her work with courage.
In 1960, she wrote a research paper with another engineer about how to place a spacecraft into orbit.
That was the first time a woman in her division received credit as an author of a research report.
Katherine’s remarkable calculations
Katherine’s remarkable calculations by hand were trusted more than digital computers.
In early 1962, John Glenn, one of the pioneering American astronauts, was preparing to orbit the Earth for the first time in American history.
NASA used an electronic computer, first introduced into the space program a year earlier, to calculate the spaceship’s trajectory, but it made many minor errors.
Glenn, who was concerned about its accuracy, asked Katherine Johnson to double-check the machine’s figures by hand.
“If she says the numbers are good,” he said, “I’m good to go.”
Using only a pencil and a slide rule, Katherine spent a day and a half checking the calculations and finally made sure of them.
Eventually, Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth.
Katherine was also part of the team that performed calculations for Apollo 11, which sent the first three men to the Moon in 1969, and even the plan to put people on Mars, which is still being worked on today.
Katherine retired in 1986 after thirty-three years at NASA.
After that, she dedicated the rest of her life to championing access to STEM education for Black girls.
For her contributions, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 and said,
“Katherine G. Johnson refused to be limited by society’s expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach.”
In 2017, NASA dedicated a building in her honor in Virginia and named it the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility.
She died on February 24, 2020, at the age of 101, but her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten.
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