Katherine Johnson: Female Mathematician of Apollo 11

Author:
Ravi Rajan
Updated:
Sep 16, 2023 10:49 PM EDT

The incredible story of Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician whose calculations helped put men on the moon
Katherine Johnson

One Giant Leap for Womankind

On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins boarded the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, where they planted a U.S. flag. Overnight, they became superheroes, with their names forever immortalized in American history.

They deserved the ovations, but in the celebrations that followed, no one bothered to mention that the spotless calculations that allowed the moon landing to happen were the product of a brilliant black woman.

Human Computers

Katherine Johnson was one of NASA's "human computers," a group of women who toiled in the background of the agency. According to NASA historian Bill Barry, “The main reason women were hired to be computers was that it was drudge work. The engineers didn’t want to do it.”

It took nearly 48 years, a best-selling book by Margot Lee Shetterly, the 2016 Academy-Award nominated film Hidden Figures, starring Taraji P. Henson as Johnson, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama to acknowledge and recognize her stupendous achievements.

By this time, Katherine was in her late 90s, a long wait for a woman to get her due from a world that believed only white people could do great things.

Who Is Katherine Johnson?

Katherine was born in 1918 in West Virginia, and from a very young age, it was clear to her teachers that she was gifted in mathematics. Her exceptional abilities meant that she graduated high school at 14 and graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia State College with degrees in mathematics and French at age 18.

Johnson's dream job was as a research mathematician, but that wasn't going to happen in the United States in the late 1930s. Like America itself, science and mathematics were fields dominated by white men, so from 1939 to 1953, Johnson concentrated on family life.

1953: Joins NACA

It was in 1953 that she finally found an outlet for her brilliance: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). She was hired as a "human computer," where her job was to perform complex calculations for spacecraft trajectories and navigation systems.

Women at those times were paid far less than their male counterparts, and being a woman of color further ensured her relative unimportance. In 1958, when NACA was dissolved and reformed into NASA, Johnson became the only woman of color on the newly-formed Space Task Group charged with putting an American astronaut on the moon.

Katherine Johnson was a relentless trailblazer who asked questions until she got the answer she wanted.
Katherine Johnson

Segregated America

The America in which Katherine Johnson grew up was far more overt in its racism. Black people were required by law to attend separate schools. They were forbidden to travel inside public buses and were banned from "whites-only" restaurants. It was a crime to marry a person of a different race. Even at NASA, a supposed bastion of objective, scientific inquiry, bathrooms, cafeterias, and computing pools were segregated.

The Hidden Figures film used the agency's segregated bathrooms as a vehicle for dramatic license. In fact, Johnson desegregated the bathrooms almost by accident. The white bathrooms closest to her desk were unmarked, so she used them for weeks before realizing her mistake. She never corrected herself and no one at NASA objected. That said, in 1958 the bathrooms at Langley were formally desegrated by agency policy.

Relentless Persistence Amidst Racism

From a professional standpoint, the segregated audience that loomed largest for Katherine was NASA's agency briefings. They were only for white men, but Johnson had a relentless curiosity to understand the underlying technology. She asked her engineering colleagues why she could not attend the briefings.

“Girls are not allowed, "she was told.
“Is there a law against it?” she asked.

Trailblazing Fearlessness

Though constricted by the legal bounds of racism, Katherine's quiet persistence and stupendous knowledge ensured that nobody messed with her. She was a tireless trailblazer who asked questions until she got the answer she wanted.

Her daughter Kathy, who had a 33-year career as math teacher, said of her mother, “You can just imagine in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, it was kind of hard for females to be in the workforce number one. And then to be in a field like research and mathematics, she sort of had to feel her way. What I think got her through was she was fearless.”

Before his Friendship 7 mission, astronaut John Glenn requested that Johnson personally recheck the calculations by hand, saying, "If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go."

"If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go."

— John Glenn

Presidential Medal of Freedom and Hidden Figures

On November 24, 2015, President Barack Obama presented Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, acknowledging that she "refused to be limited by society's expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity's reach."

A little over a year later, Katherine was further immortalized when Hidden Figures was released worldwide. The film was a commercial and critical success, earning three Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress for Octavia Spencer.

Johnson Inspired Generations of Women

On February 24, 2020, Katherine Johnson died at a retirement home in Newport News, Virginia. She was 101. She inspired multiple generations of women to make their careers in STEM, and will continue to do so for years to come.

She didn't have a doctorate or a diploma from an elite school, yet she was NASA's best mathematician for trajectory calculations at a time when that was an agency priority. She was the perfect example of fully realized potential far outclassing the "right" pedigree—i.e. being white and male.

Raising the Bar for Humans

NASA rightly acknowledged her contributions in a profound statement:

"Her dedication and skill as a mathematician helped put humans on the moon and made it possible for our astronauts to take the first steps in space that we now follow on a journey to Mars. At NASA, we will continue building on her legacy and work tirelessly to increase opportunities for everyone who has something to contribute to raising the bar for humans.