“Everybody was concerned about them getting there,” she said in 2010. Johnson was still calculating trajectories in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first moon landing, and in 1970 when the Apollo 13 mission was aborted and nearly ended in disaster. Johnson authored or coauthored 26 research reports during her career.Barack Obama presenting Katherine Johnson with the presidential medal of freedom in 2015. It was the first time a woman in her division received credit as an author of a research report. In 1960 she coauthored a paper with one of the group’s engineers about calculations for placing a spacecraft into orbit. That changed in 1958 when NACA was incorporated into the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which banned segregation.Īt NASA Johnson was a member of the Space Task Group. During this time, NACA was segregated, and the West Computers had to use separate bathrooms and dining facilities. The women, known as the West Computers, analyzed test data and provided mathematical computations that were essential to the success of the early U.S. In 1953 she began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)’s West Area Computing unit, a group of African American women who manually performed complex mathematical calculations for the program’s engineers. He died in 1956, and three years later she married James Johnson.Ī-B-C, 1-2-3… If you consider that counting numbers is like reciting the alphabet, test how fluent you are in the language of mathematics in this quiz. She studied math there but soon left after marrying James Goble and deciding to start a family. In 1939, however, she was selected to be one of the first three African American students to enroll in a graduate program at West Virginia University. She subsequently moved to Virginia to take a teaching job. In 1937, at age 18, Coleman graduated with highest honours from West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University), earning bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and French. Her work helped send astronauts to the Moon.Ĭoleman’s intelligence and skill with numbers became apparent when she was a child by the time she was 10 years old, she had started attending high school. Katherine Johnson, née Katherine Coleman, also known as (1939–56) Katherine Goble, (born August 26, 1918, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, U.S.-died February 24, 2020, Newport News, Virginia), American mathematician who calculated and analyzed the flight paths of many spacecraft during her more than three decades with the U.S. Three years after his death, she married James Johnson. From 1939 to 1956 she was Katherine Goble, having married James Goble. Katherine Johnson’s maiden name was Coleman.
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