February is Black History Month, an observance meant as a way for people to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history,” as former president Gerald Ford stated when he officially recognized Black History Month in 1976 during the celebrating of the United States Bicentennial, thus leading to its annual celebration across the country. It is a way for people to reflect on the accomplishments and contributions that Black people have had on our society. One such person who has had a lasting impact, specifically in the scientific community, is Kathrine Johnson.

Kathrine Johnson, born Creola Kathrine Coleman, was an influential mathematician whose work played a vital role in some of the first successful U.S. crewed space flights. Born on August 16, 1918 in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, Kathrine was the youngest of four siblings. She, like her father, was mathematically inclined and showed this from a young age. Since Greenbrier did not offer any public education to African American students after the 8th grade, her family decided she and her siblings were to attend a laboratory school run by West Virginia State Institute. By the time she was fourteen, she had graduated high school and enrolled in West Virginia State College, a historically black college. There, she took every mathematics course the college had to offer. In 1937, she graduated with highest honors and graduated with bachelors degrees in mathematics and French.

Previously she had been a teacher as those were the only jobs she could find, considering it was difficult to cross the threshold into fields in STEM. Things changed in 1953 when she began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor for NASA until 1958. There she worked as a computer alongside other African American women, performing complex mathematical calculations for the engineers in the West Area Computing Unit. NACA was a segregated organization, which meant that the West Computers, as they became known as, were required to use separate designated bathroom areas. After NACA disbanded and became NASA, segregation was banned within the organization, but discrimination was still prevalent. Kathrine stated that she “didn’t feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job… I didn’t feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn’t feel it.” (historyvshollywood.com)

Beginning in 1958, she worked as an aerospace technologist. In 1960 she coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, which was a report that laid out the equations relating to an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft was specified. Kathrine recalled that “I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston … but Henry Pearson, our supervisor – he was not a fan of women … kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, ‘Katherine should finish the report, she’s done most of the work anyway’” (archive.org). This was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division was given due credit as an author of a research report. She additionally calculated the necessary trajectory for the May 5, 1961 mission for the first American in space, Alan Shepard.

It wasn’t until 1962 that Kathrine would do what she is most known for. At the time, NASA was preparing for the orbital mission of John Glenn. The orbital flight was so complex it “required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda” (nasa.gov). At the time, technology was known to be faulty, so they brought in Kathrine to do all the calculations by hand and confirmed them. This voyage marked the pivoting point in the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States. Kathrine believes that her greatest contribution to space exploration would be the calculations that helped sync Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. By the time she retired in 1986, she had authored or coauthored 26 research reports. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. She passed away on February 24, 2020 at the age of 101. Women like Kathrine Johnson are evidence that one can contribute and change society for the better as well as highlight the value of the Black community. Go Knights!