NASA’s “Hidden Figure” Is Not Forgotten

August 26th marked what would have been Katherine Johnson’s 103rd birthday. Born in West Virginia before helping lead humanity to the moon, her accomplishments laid the groundwork for today’s mission as we are on the horizon of a return to the moon. 

Johnson broke into STEM and made history, paving the way for many to follow her. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission in May 1961, the US’s first human spaceflight. This was one of many of her brilliant accomplishments. 

She is famous for checking the computer’s math for John Glenn’s historic first orbital spaceflight by an American in February 1962, continuing on to do the calculations for the first Moon landing in 1969. She worked for NASA Langley Research Center and its predecessor, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, from 1953 to 1986. 

Johnson often spoke to students, encouraging them to pursue STEM careers, “We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering and technology,” she said to students at the NASA Trailblazers and Legends STEM Conference in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2010. “And there will always, always be mathematics. Everything is physics and math.”

Johnson was featured alongside Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson in the best-selling 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race” by Margot Lee Shetterly, which then became a hit movie in 2017.

Johnson was born on Aug. 26, 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and died on Feb. 24, 2020, after completing 101 trips around the sun.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography