Why Katherine Johnson is important to Black History Month
February marks Black History Month. Follow the AJC this month for a series of short stories and videos and people, places and events that played a significant role in the development of black people in America.
No. 5
Katherine Johnson: How is this for confidence? In 1962, when NASA used computers to calculate John Glenn’s orbit around Earth, Glenn had one request: He wanted Katherine Johnson, a West Virginia State University graduate and mathematician, to personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight aboard Friendship 7 – the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
In 1953 Johnson quit her job as a substitute math teacher in Newport News, Va. and took a job at NASA as a “computer,” doing analysis on things like gust alleviation for aircraft.
From 1958 until she retired in 1983, she worked as an aerospace technologist.
In 2015 President Barack Obama presented her with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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