Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson 1918 (age 100 years), White Sulphur Springs, WV
She is an African-American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. manned spaceflights whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. manned spaceflights. During her 35-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped the space agency pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks.
Johnson’s work included calculating trajectories, launch windows and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those of astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo lunar lander and command module on flights to the Moon Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
Katherine Johnson was born Katherine Coleman in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to Joylette and Joshua Coleman. She was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman, farmer, handyman, and worked at the Greenbrier Hotel.
Johnson showed strong mathematical abilities from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African-American students past the eighth grade, the Colemans arranged for their children to attend high school in Institute, West Virginia. This school was on the campus of West Virginia State College (WVSC, now West Virginia State University). Johnson was enrolled when she was only 10 years old.
The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer.
Johnson graduated from high school at 14 and entered West Virginia State, a historically black college. As a student, she took every math course offered by the college. Multiple professors mentored her, including chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King, who had also mentored Johnson throughout high school, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to receive a Ph.D. in math. Claytor added new math courses just for Katherine.
She graduated summa cum laude in 1937, with degrees in mathematics and French, at age 18. She took on a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia.
In 1939, after marrying her first husband, James Goble, Johnson left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate math program. She quit after one year, after becoming pregnant and choosing to focus on her family.
They had three daughters: Constance, Joylette, and Katherine. In 1953, she and James moved their family to Newport News to pursue a new job opportunity. In 1956, James Goble died due to an inoperable brain tumor.
Katherine Goble remarried in 1959 to James A. Johnson, who had been a second lieutenant in the army and was a veteran of the Korean War.
Katherine Johnson continued her career at NASA. She sang in the choir of Carver Presbyterian Church for 50 years. She has been a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha since college, the first sorority established by and for African-American women. Johnson and her husband, who have six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, live in Hampton, Virginia She continues to encourage her grandchildren and students to pursue careers in science and technology.
At the time of her entry, she was the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Through WVSC’s president, Dr. John W. Davis, she became one of three African-American students, and the only woman, selected to integrate the graduate school after the United States Supreme Court ruling Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938). The court had ruled that states that provided public higher education to white students also had to provide it to black students, to be satisfied either by establishing black colleges and universities or by admitting black students to previously white-only universities.
In 2016, Johnson was included in the list of “100 Women”, BBC’s list of 100 influential women worldwide. NASA stated, “Her calculations proved as critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program and the start of the Space Shuttle program, as they did to those first steps on the country’s journey into space.
Johnson has been portrayed in the media. The highly acclaimed film Hidden Figures, released in December 2016, was based on the non-fiction book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly, which was published earlier that year. It follows Johnson and other female African-American mathematicians (Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan) who worked at NASA. Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson in the film Appearing alongside Henson at the 89th Academy Awards, Johnson received a standing ovation from the audience. In an earlier interview, Johnson offered the following comment about the movie: “It was well-done. The three leading ladies did an excellent job portraying us. In a 2016 episode of the NBC series Timeless, titled “Space Race”, the mathematician is portrayed by Nadine Ellis.
Awards
Group Achievement Award presented to NASA’s Lunar Spacecraft and Operations team – for pioneering work in the field of navigation supporting the spacecraft that orbited and mapped the moon in preparation for the Apollo program
1971, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1986: NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
1998, Honorary Doctor of Laws, from SUNY Farmingdale
1999, West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year
2006, Honorary Doctor of Science by the Capitol College, Laurel, Maryland
2010, Honorary Doctorate of Science from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia
2014, De Pizan Honor from National Women’s History Museum
2015, NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award
2015, Presidential Medal of Freedom
2016, Silver Snoopy award from Leland Melvin
2016, Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Arthur B.C. Walker II Award
2016, Presidential Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia
2017, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Medal of Honor
2017, Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility in Hampton, Virginia, opened on September 22, 2017, and so dedicated to Johnson
2017 Honorary Doctorate from Spelman College.
May 12, 2018, Honorary Doctorate of Science from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
February 22, 2019, NASA renamed the Independent Verification and Validation Facility to the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility
April 29, 2019, Honorary degree from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa
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