Katherine Johnson

Katherine Goble Johnson

Born Aug. 26, 1918

American Mathematician

Katherine Johnson, working as a physicist at NASA in 1966.

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“I counted everything: the steps, the dishes, the stars in the sky”

- Katherine Johnson, talking about her childhood.

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Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson was born on 26th August, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. She graduated from West Virginia State College in 1937 with highest honours, earning a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and French. In 1939, she was one of three black students, and the only black woman, in West Virginia’s graduate schools when the graduate schools were integrated. Johnson went on to work as a teacher in a black public school in Virginia.

Johnson worked for the Langley laboratory at what was then known as NACA (and now is known as NASA) from 1953. In 1960, she became the first woman in the Flight Research Division to receive credit as an author of a research report, when the report she co-authored with Ted Skopinski was published.

In 1961, she calculated the trajectory and launch window for the Mercury mission which put Alan Shepard in space, the first American to do so. When NASA later used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify the numbers.

Working with engineers Al Hamer and John Young, Johnson also provided trajectory work for the Lunar Orbiter Program. The Lunar Orbiter program involved five identical unmanned spacecraft launched in advance of the Apollo 11 mission, which scanned the surface of the moon to locate smooth level areas which would be suitable as landing sites for the moon landing. During this, 99% of the Moon was photographed with a resolution of 60 meters or better, and this was 10 times better than resolutions achievable via observations from Earth at the time.

The calculations Johnson wrote were used to sync Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. These calculations were essential, as they allowed precise trajectory information to be obtained for the moon landing, resulting in the Eagle, the Apollo 11 spacecraft, to land in what was then dubbed the Tranquility Base.

In 2015, President Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Eagle, the lunar module of Apollo 11, floating above the surface of the Moon.