Katherine Johnson worked at NASA for several decades (photo courtesy of NASA)
Did you know that the word “computer” used to refer to a person?
During the Space Race, NASA – and its predecessor, NACA - hired hundreds of “computers” – people who computed: that is, they did performed the calculations for air and space travel. Many of these computers were Black women like Katherine Johnson (1918-2020).
In 1953, Johnson got a job with the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, which hired Black people for a segregated computing section in their Guidance and Navigation Department.
The segregated computing pool disbanded in 1958, and Johnson moved to working for the newly created NASA, where she became notorious for her mathematical brilliance and accuracy. The 2016 film Hidden Figures dramatizes the work of Johnson and other Black female scientists at NASA during this period.
Johnson calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961 space flight of Alan Shephard, the first American in space. When NASA used their new electronic computers to calculate astronaut John Glenn’s projected orbit around the earth, the new technology made Glenn nervous. He asked for Katherine Johnson specifically, refusing to fly until she checked the calculations herself.
In total, Johnson worked as a computer for 33 years, helping calculate Apollo 11’s flight to the Moon as well as doing early calculations for the Space Shuttle program.
In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of the boundaries she helped break, both in society and in space.
President Obama presented Katherine Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 (courtesy of Getty Images)