Katherine Johnson

Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on August 26, 1918. She excelled in mathematics and graduated in 1937 from West Virginia State College with degrees in mathematics and French. After teaching, she was selected in 1939 as one of the first Black students offered a place in West Virginia University's graduate program. She enrolled in mathematics but left after one session to start a family. Her education and early career unfolded in a period when racial segregation and barriers to women's professional work shaped access to schools and scientific jobs.

In 1953 Johnson joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at its Langley laboratory in Virginia. She worked in West Area Computing, a segregated unit of Black women whose job title, “computers,” referred to people who performed mathematical calculations for engineers and researchers. Johnson initially analyzed flight-test data and later worked on problems in spaceflight. NACA became NASA in 1958, and her work continued as the agency developed its human-spaceflight program.

In 1960 Johnson and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored a NACA technical report on calculating the azimuth angle needed to place a satellite over a selected point on Earth. The work connected mathematical analysis with practical questions of orbit and launch geometry. Johnson later performed trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 flight in May 1961, the first American human spaceflight. Before John Glenn's 1962 Friendship 7 orbital mission, she checked by hand calculations that had also been run through electronic computers; Glenn had asked for her verification. She also contributed to Project Apollo, including calculations that helped coordinate the Lunar Module with the Command and Service Module in lunar orbit.

Johnson also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite, later renamed Landsat, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired from NASA in 1986 after 33 years at Langley. In 2015 President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her career is remembered both for its mathematical work and for what it reveals about the skilled contributions of Black women working in segregated technical institutions.