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Portrait of Katherine Johnson

Science · Maths, astronomy, medicine & more

Katherine Johnson

1918–2020 · American

Mathematics — orbital mechanics

Katherine Johnson was an African American mathematician whose trajectory calculations at NACA and then NASA's Langley Research Center were vital to early American human spaceflight. She did the trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's 1961 flight, famously checked the computer's orbital calculations for John Glenn's 1962 orbit, and worked on the Apollo lunar missions. Her story reached a wide audience through Margot Lee Shetterly's book and the 2016 film Hidden Figures, and she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

How to spot them

  • ▸Hidden Figures (book and 2016 film, played by Taraji P. Henson)
  • ▸John Glenn asked for her to verify the electronic computer's numbers before Friendship 7
  • ▸NACA/NASA Langley 'human computers'; West Area Computing unit
  • ▸White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; died aged 101 in 2020

Key discoveries & works

Trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 flight (1961)

America's first human spaceflight

Hand-checking the orbital calculations for John Glenn's Friendship 7 (1962)

Verified the IBM computer's orbital equations with a desktop calculator at Glenn's request

Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite over a Selected Earth Position (1960)

Report with Ted Skopinski; the first time a woman in Langley's Flight Research Division received author credit

Calculations to synchronise the Apollo Lunar Module with the Command and Service Module (1960s)

Part of her work on the Apollo Moon landings

Key ideas

  • Showed the central, long-unrecognised role of Black women 'human computers' in the US space programme
  • Her reliability made her the human check on early electronic computers

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on 26 August 1918
  • •Graduated from West Virginia State College in 1937 with degrees in mathematics and French
  • •One of the first Black students to integrate graduate study at West Virginia University (1939)
  • •Joined NACA's Langley laboratory in 1953, initially in the West Area Computing unit led by Dorothy Vaughan
  • •Retired from NASA in 1986 after 33 years; authored or co-authored 26 research reports
  • •Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2015, aged 97
  • •NASA Langley's Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility opened in 2017
  • •Died on 24 February 2020, aged 101

Drill it — 6 cards

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Sources