across the launch pad toward him smiling broadly Glenn knew Katherine Johnson must have done the math Glenn laughed quietly and looked at the sky He was going to space Astronaut John Glenn orbited Earth in Friendship 7 On February 20 1962 John Glenn blasted off He completed three Earth orbits before safely splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean Glenn was celebrated as an American hero He was the star of parades parties and countless news stories One hundred thirty-five million people had watched his mission on TV Johnson wasn’t invited to any parades She was not the guest of honor at any fabulous parties Few members of her own community in nearby Hampton Virginia even knew what she had done None of this was terribly surprising to Johnson She was an African-American human computer She was used to being absolutely essential but also unseen
And yet NASA employed hundreds of female mathematicians as human computers Some were white Others were black These computers performed the math that the engineers needed to build fly and track air and spacecraft Over decades of clumsy trial and error NASA had learned to rely on these women to do its math They were excellent mathematicians In fact a 1942 agency memo stated that the engineers admit themselves that the girl computers do the work more rapidly and accurately than they could 2 And as an added benefit letting the human computers do the math helped the engineers spend their time dreaming up new types of spacecraft Johnson never complained about being ignored She knew she was lucky to be at NASA And though some at NASA might not admit it the agency was lucky to have her Katherine Johnson was a brilliant mathematician She was born in 1918 and grew up in a small town in West Virginia Most of the African American girls at that time left school after eighth grade Becoming a professional mathematician was a career few people in her hometown pursued But Johnson was different She turned her passion for numbers into a vocation Johnson had always focused on math She was drawn to numbers even as a young child I counted everything she recalled I counted the steps to the road the steps up to church the number of dishes and silverware I washed anything that could be counted I did 3 Her parents and teachers recognized Johnson’s talent They encouraged the young girl to work hard With their help Johnson flew through school She skipped grades to graduate high school at age 14 She graduated from West Virginia State College at age 18 with the highest honors After college she got married and had children She then worked
in one of the only careers available for educated women she became a teacher Johnson enjoyed teaching but struggled to stretch her meager paycheck When she heard about an opportunity for black mathematicians in Virginia she jumped at the chance After all it promised to pay three times her teaching salary In 1953 Johnson was hired at NASA then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics NACA Johnson could hardly contain her excitement at the chance to work full time as a mathematician On her first day of work she happily reported for duty in a building called West Area Computing As soon as she walked in she noticed something The building was almost entirely staffed by other black people Johnson was used to segregation Growing up in the South she was familiar with the notion that black and white people had to use separate facilities Jim Crow laws a series of rules that enforced racial segregation had been part of her life since birth Johnson’s supervisor was a black woman named Dorothy Vaughan She greeted her new employee and showed her to her desk Vaughan explained Johnson’s new responsibilities Each morning Vaughan would distribute mathematical equations to her staff of computers When they finished the computers would turn their work in to Vaughan She would then return it to the correct departments Occasionally Vaughan explained she might send Johnson out to a specific department to do on site calculations Just two weeks after Johnson started in West Area Computing Vaughan handed her an on-site assignment She would be helping calculate numbers for the Flight Research Division The engineers in this division were some of the agency’s smartest They worked on incredibly complex problems Their math took them to the cutting edge of
aeronautics As a black woman Johnson at first met some resistance from her white coworkers On her first day Johnson smiled at the white man working next to her He just walked away But she came to get along very well with her white male coworkers They appreciated her curiosity and intelligence Johnson loved how much they loved their jobs She even adopted their morning ritual She would get a cup of coffee sit at her desk and read through the daily newspapers and aviation journals She scanned them for new information about advancements in the aerospace industry Any news she spotted in the papers might affect her work Johnson’s colleagues noticed her commitment and drive They stopping thinking about her as a colored computer Now they simply thought of her as Katherine Johnson was delighted to have found such a challenging workplace After years of searching she knew she had landed in the right spot NACA appreciated her efforts and gave her a place to thrive But the Flight Research Division wouldn’t be the end of Johnson’s story Her work there would later land her a coveted seat in the Space Task Group the division charged with winning the space race
