Katherine Johnson

Obituary Katherine Johnson (1918–2020) NASA mathematician who calculated trajectories for early space flights. atherine Johnson was the most space agency. The Flight Research Division recognized of the African American diverted its attention to spacecraft, and by “human computers” — female math- 1958, Johnson had contributed to ‘Notes on ematicians who worked at NASA and Space Technology’, the agency’s first compre- its predecessor, the National Advisory hensive reference document on space flight. KCommittee for Aeronautics (NACA), from the By 1959, she had prepared a trajectory analysis 1930s until the 1980s. Johnson was most proud for a crewed suborbital flight. The following of the calculations that she contributed to the year, she co-authored the research report Apollo 11 mission to place the first human on ‘Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout the Moon. But it was her role producing and for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth checking the trajectory equations for astro- Position’, laying out the equations that would naut John Glenn’s pioneering Project Mercury form the basis of that crewed orbital space orbital space flight in 1962 that established her flight piloted by Glenn. professional reputation. Her named credit on the report was a first for Wider fame for Johnson came in 2016 with a woman in her division, and positioned her to the publication of my group biography Hidden play a part in a mission that enabled the United Figures, and the release of the film based on it. States to draw even with the Soviet Union — Asked about the challenges of being black in a one of the pivotal moments of the space race. segregated workplace, or of having upended In the days leading up to Glenn’s flight, the the no-women policy in her division’s research astronaut asked Johnson — “the girl”, as he NASA meetings, she was most likely to reply: “I was called her — to hand-check the trajectory equa- just doing my job.” tions that had been input into the IBM 7090 A gifted mathematician who always followed “The flight forever linked a computer. The flight forever linked a black her curiosity, Johnson became a powerful female mathematician to one of the United symbol of the often-unheralded contribu- black female mathematician States’ most glorious achievements. Johnson tions that women and minority ethnic groups to one of the United States’ later contributed calculations to the parking have made to science, technology, mathe- most glorious achievements.” orbit of Apollo 11’s command and service mod- matics and computing over the course of the ule during the first crewed Moon landing. She twentieth century. Although her fascination spent the latter years of her career working on with numbers was obvious from childhood segregated public schools. In 1939, she was the Space Shuttle. — she recalled counting dishes, stars, steps, hand-picked by the president of West Virginia Charismatic and gregarious, Johnson everything — the possibility of deploying her State College to be one of the first black stu- embraced her work and her colleagues with talent as a professional mathematician was dents to be allowed to study in the graduate the same enthusiasm. Lunch usually found anything but. programme in West Virginia University, Mor- her at her desk, playing a fiercely competi- Born Katherine Coleman in White Sulphur gantown. After one semester, however, she tive game of bridge with engineers Al Hamer Springs, West Virginia, she and her three sib- left to get married, and spent the next 13 years and John Young. She became best friends with lings were sent 200 kilometres away by their raising a family and teaching in public schools Eunice Smith, another West Area Computing parents to be educated, because there was no in neighbouring Virginia. employee, and the two took a week off from local school beyond sixth grade for those who In 1952 she applied to work at NACA’s work each year to attend a basketball tourna- were called ‘coloured’ students in the pre-civil- research outpost in Hampton, Virginia, then ment of historically black colleges. rights-era United States. Teachers allowed called the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory. After retiring from NASA in 1986, she her to skip several grades in school, and she She began her career in the all-black, all-female regularly visited classrooms to enchant was just 14 when she entered the historically West Area Computing Unit, helmed by mathe- students with the wonders of mathematics and black West Virginia State College in Institute matician Dorothy Vaughan. Vaughan soon sent the benefits of pursuing a career in science, to study mathematics. There, she became the her to fill an opening in the Flight Research technology, engineering or mathematics. Even top student of acclaimed topologist William Division, a group that specialized in tests on as the popularity of Hidden Figures turned her Waldron Schieffelin Claytor, the third Afri- actual aeroplanes, rather than wind-tunnel into something of a celebrity, Johnson, with can American to earn a PhD in maths. Neither simulations. For five years, Johnson was characteristic understatement, sought to pupil nor teacher knew where, or even if, she part of an engineering team that investi- deflect the attention. would be able to put this rigorous training to gated phenomena such as wake turbulence, work; prior to the Second World War, women leading to improved safety for military and Margot Lee Shetterly is the author of the with mathematics degrees were most often commercial aviation. 2016 book Hidden Figures, and an executive required to go into classroom teaching. The Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik producer of the film adaptation. She Johnson graduated in 1937 and, predicta- satellite in 1957 ignited the space race and interviewed Katherine Johnson extensively for bly, spent two years teaching in West Virginia’s spurred the transformation of NACA into the her research. Nature | Vol 579 | 19 March 2020 | 341 ©2020 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. .

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