On this day in 1918, Katherine Johnson, the mathematician whose calculations helped send American astronauts into space and safely back to Earth, was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
Born Creola Katherine Coleman on Aug. 26, 1918, Johnson was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher, while her father worked as a lumberman, farmer, handyman and at the Greenbrier Hotel. Johnson showed an early talent for mathematics, but Greenbrier County did not provide public education for Black students beyond the eighth grade. Her family arranged for the children to attend school in Institute, West Virginia.
Johnson graduated from high school at 14 and entered West Virginia State College, where she took every mathematics course offered. Professor W.W. Schieffelin Claytor even created new courses for her. In 1937, at 18, Johnson graduated summa cum laude with degrees in mathematics and French. She later became the first Black woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University.
Her career took a major turn in 1953 when she joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the agency that later became NASA. She initially worked as a human computer, performing complex mathematical calculations. Johnson eventually moved into flight research, where her knowledge of analytic geometry and her accuracy earned the trust of engineers and astronauts.
Johnson calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s 1961 flight, which made him the first American in space. When NASA prepared John Glenn’s historic orbital mission, Glenn specifically requested that Johnson check the electronic computer’s calculations before he flew. She also contributed calculations to Apollo 11, Apollo 13, the Space Shuttle program and plans for a human mission to Mars.
Johnson retired in 1986 after a 33-year career with NASA and its predecessor. Her contributions received broader national recognition decades later. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and Congress awarded her the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019. Her story reached an even wider audience through the 2016 film “Hidden Figures,” in which Taraji P. Henson portrayed her.
Johnson died Feb. 24, 2020, at age 101. By then, the mathematician who once worked behind the scenes of America’s space program had become one of its most widely recognized figures.
