Creola Katherine Johnson: August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020

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✪ Creola Katherine Johnson was an American human computer whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform tasks previously requiring humans. The space agency noted her “historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist.”

Johnson’s work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights; including those for astronauts Alan Shepard (the first American in space) and John Glenn (the first American in orbit), and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a human mission to Mars.

In 2019, the United States Congress awarded Johnson the Congressional Gold Medal and NASA announced the establishment of the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in her home state of West Virginia. In 2021, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Katherine Johnson was born Creola Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to Joylette Roberta (née Lowe) and Joshua McKinley Coleman. She was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman, farmer, and handyman. He also worked at the Greenbrier Hotel.

Johnson showed strong mathematical ability from an early age. Because at that time Greenbrier County did not offer public education for African-American students beyond the eighth grade, the Colemans arranged for their children to attend a high school in Institute, West Virginia, on the West Virginia State College (WVSC) campus; Johnson enrolled when she was only ten years old. The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer.

After graduating from high school at the age of fourteen, Johnson matriculated at WVSC, a historically black college where she took every mathematics course the college offered. Several professors mentored her, including the chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King, who had guided Coleman throughout high school, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to receive a doctorate in mathematics. Claytor added new courses just for Johnson. In 1937, at the age of 18, Johnson graduated summa cum laude with degrees in mathematics and French. Johnson was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.  She took a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia.

After marrying her first husband in 1938, James Goble, she left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate mathematics program. However, she quit at the end of the first semester to focus on her family life.

After her daughters had grown up, Johnson returned to teaching. In 1952, a relative mentioned the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring for its West Area computing section at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, based in Hampton, Virginia, near Langley Field. NACA hired African-American mathematicians as well as whites for their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson accepted a job offer from the agency in June 1953. For Johnson to take the job, her family relocated to Newport News.

According to an oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project:

At first Johnson worked in a pool of women performing mathematical calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual “computers who wore skirts.” Their main job was to read the data from the plane’s black boxes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine’s knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that “they forgot to return me to the pool.” While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before). She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged.

From 1953 to 1958 Johnson worked as a human computer, performing calculations on projects like gust alleviation for aircraft.

Originally assigned to the West Area Computers section supervised by Dorothy Vaughan, Johnson was reassigned to the Guidance and Control Division of Langley’s Flight Research Division which was staffed exclusively by white male engineers. In an interview with WHRO-TV, Johnson later said she “didn’t notice any 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 […] and play bridge at lunch.” She added: “I didn’t feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn’t feel it.”

From 1958 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson worked as a human computer for NACA’s successor, the Spacecraft Controls Branch where she calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961, space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She also calculated the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission. She also plotted backup navigation charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures. When NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn’s orbit around earth, officials asked Johnson to verify the computer’s numbers. Glenn asked for her specifically and refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations.

Johnson later worked directly with digital computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped establish confidence in the new technology. In 1961, her work helped to ensure that Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mercury capsule was found quickly after landing, using the accurate trajectory which had been established.

She also helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. During the Moon landing, Johnson was at a meeting in the Pocono Mountains where she and a few others crowded around a small television screen to watch the first steps taken on the Moon. In 1970, Johnson worked on the Apollo 13 Moon mission. When the mission was aborted, her work on backup procedures and charts helped set a safe path for the crew’s return to Earth, by creating a one-star observation system to allow astronauts to determine their location accurately. In a 2010 interview, Johnson recalled, “Everybody was concerned about them getting there. We were concerned about them getting back.” Later in her career, she worked on the Space Shuttle program, the Earth Resources Satellite, and on future plans for a human mission to Mars.

Katherine and James Francis Goble had three daughters. The family lived in Newport News, Virginia starting in 1953. James died of an inoperable brain tumor in 1956 and in 1959 Katherine married James A. “Jim” Johnson, a United States Army officer and veteran of the Korean War. They remained married for 60 years, until his death in 2019 at the age of 93. For 50 years Johnson was a member of Carver Memorial Presbyterian Church, where she sang in the choir.

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Johnson coauthored 26 scientific papers & her social influence as a pioneer in space and computing sciences is represented by the honors she received and her status as a role model for a life in science. Johnson was named West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in 1999. On November 24, 2015, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Two NASA facilities are named in her honor. On May 5, 2016, a new 40,000-square-foot building was named the “Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility” and formally dedicated in her honor at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The facility opened on September 22, 2017. Johnson attended the event, which also marked the 55th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s historic rocket launch and splashdown, a success Johnson helped make possible. 

At the ceremony, deputy director Lewin said: “Millions of people around the world watched Shepard’s flight, but what they didn’t know at the time was that the calculations that got him into space and safely home were done by today’s guest of honor, Katherine Johnson.” During the event, Johnson also received a Silver Snoopy award, often called the astronaut’s award. NASA said it is given to those “who have made outstanding contributions to flight safety and mission success.” On February 22, 2019, NASA renamed the Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility.

Johnson died at a Newport News retirement home from complications of old age on February 24, 2020, at the age of 101. She is interred at Hampton Memorial Gardens in Hampton, Virginia. After her death, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine called her “an American hero whose pioneering legacy will never be forgotten.” ✪