JOHNSON LEAVES ASTONISHING LEGACY

Katherine Johnson, the 101-year-old pioneer, trailblazer and newly famous mathematician, passed away in her home state of West Virginia in late February, leaving behind a story worthy of the history books.  

Johnson’s tale – covered in part by the 2016 Oscar-nominated movie, “Hidden Figures” – is one of overcoming astronomical boundaries of gender, race, and science to achieve new metaphorical and literal heights in the story of human spaceflight.

Johnson graduated from high school at age 14 and hit the ground running. She was one of the very first black students at West Virginia University, to become a mathematician. She started out wanting to be a teacher, like her mother. Instead, she honed her already stunning skills in math and eventually joined the very newly formed NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), a very small and underfunded advisory board that researched flight to aid in the Cold War era.  

She joined NACA in 1953. This was a time before advanced computers, where, in fact, her job title was “computer!” In those days, non-human computers were so limited that there was no way one could even come within spitting distance of what a human mathematician could accomplish. But, Johnson’s opportunities were limited, being a black woman in a southern state. She worked in a segregated, all female branch of human computers.  

However, things were about to change. The Soviet Union began to significantly outpace the Americans in space. They launched the first artificial satellite, known as Sputnik in 1957. The next year, the United States decided it was necessary to dump money into NACA and rebrand it, to focus on human spaceflight. With that, the NACA became what we know it as today – NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

NACA was segregated, but the newly created NASA banned racial segregation. This provided the change necessary for Johnson to make history. Her mind proved to be one of NASA’s greatest assets; NASA being a place where gifted scientists are the only people who get hired. She was so gifted, in fact, that she was entrusted with calculating some of the most important flights in U.S. space history.

She calculated the flight trajectory for the first American manned spaceflight, Freedom 7, piloted by Alan Sheppard. Here, with the first U.S. astronaut in space, she proved herself.  

Johnson went on to calculate the trajectory for John Glenn on Friendship 7, America’s first orbital spaceflight, where Glenn would ask for her, specifically, to verify that the mechanical computers had planned his flight correctly. This, in fact, is the climax of the Hidden Figures movie.

But, Johnson’s career did not end there. She continued to work on the most crucial spaceflights. In 1969, she was part of the team that calculated the flight plan to guide the Saturn V rocket with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon: the historic Apollo 11 mission. She would continue her NASA career into the Space Shuttle program, eventually retiring in 1986.

Her story was then largely lost, hence the ‘Hidden’ in Hidden Figures.

It was not until 2015 that her work was truly recognized. That year, President Barrack Obama presented her with the highest award a U.S. civilian can receive, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The following year, author Margot Lee Shetterly wrote the book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race,” which included her story.

Before long, a building on the former site of NACA in Langley, Virginia, was renamed in her honor. The book was very quickly adapted to the big-budget movie, where she was played by actress Taraji P. Henson in 2017.  

Even in death, Katherine Johnson continues to inspire. Her incredible life spanned the most famous of space missions; her struggles and contributions are immortalized in books, movies and documentaries on her life; and, she is no longer hidden. She is a beacon of inspiration and devotion to a cause. In life, she started out wanting to be a teacher. In death, her story will be taught in classrooms for generations to come. It is rare to find a “hidden figure” as immortal and prominent. In every person who draws inspiration from her struggle, a piece of her will live on.