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 "Our NASA family is sad to learn the news that Katherine Johnson
passed away this morning at 101 years old," NASA Administrator
Jim Bridenstine posted to Twitter. "She was an American hero and
her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten."
Johnson was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by former
President Barack Obama in 2015 and in 2016 he cited her in his
State of the Union Address as an example of America's spirit of
discovery.
"She's one of the greatest minds ever to grace our agency or our
country," then NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said when
Johnson was presented the presidential medal.
In 2016, NASA named a research facility for Johnson in her
hometown of Hampton, Virginia, and a year later her alma mater,
West Virginia State, marked her 100th birthday in August 2018 by
establishing a scholarship in her name and erecting a statue.
Johnson and her black colleagues at the fledgling NASA were
known as "computers" when that term was used not for a
programmed electronic device but for a person who did
computations. They were little known to the public for decades
but gained overdue recognition when the book "Hidden Figures"
was published and the 2016 Oscar-nominated movie hit the
screens. Johnson attended the 2017 Oscars ceremony, joining the
film's cast in presenting an award for documentaries, and was
given a standing ovation.
Johnson had a groundbreaking career of 33 years with the space
agency, working on the Mercury and Apollo missions, including
the first moon landing in 1969, and the early years of the space
shuttle program. Astronaut John Glenn thought so much of her
that he insisted Johnson be consulted before his historic
earth-orbiting flight in 1962.
"Get the girl to check the numbers," he said.
"He knew I had done (the calculations) before for him and they
trusted my work," Johnson told the Washington Post in 2017.
IGNORED THE RACISM
During the space race between the United States and the former
Soviet Union that began in the late 1950s, Johnson and her
co-workers ran the numbers for unmanned rocket launches, test
flights and airplane safety studies using pencils, slide rules
and mechanical calculating machines. But they did their work in
facilities separate from white workers and were required to use
separate restrooms and dining facilities.
Johnson always said she was too busy with her work to be
concerned with racism.
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"She didn't close her eyes to the racism that existed," Margot Lee
Shetterly wrote in "Hidden Figures." "She knew just as well as any
other black person the tax levied upon them because of their color.
But she didn't feel it in the same way. She wished it away, willed
it out of existence inasmuch as her daily life was concerned."
As a girl, Johnson was fascinated by numbers and counted everything,
even the steps she took while walking and the dishes she washed
after dinner.
She grew up in West Virginia at a time when educational
opportunities for blacks were limited because of segregation. But
her mother, a former teacher, and her father, a farmer and handyman,
stressed education and moved the family 120 miles to a town that had
a high school for black children.
Johnson's math skills got her into West Virginia State College at
age 15. She zipped through the school's math program, earning
degrees in math and French before becoming one of the first black
students in the graduate school at West Virginia University in 1938.
After teaching school for seven years, Johnson went to work for the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a forerunner of NASA,
in Hampton in 1953 with dozens of other black women.
Johnson found herself in a realm made up almost exclusively of white
men when she was chosen to be part of the team supporting the 1961
mission that made Alan Shepard the first American in space. She
would go on to calculate crucial rocket trajectories, orbital paths
and launch windows.
Johnson made the transition to the computer era and worked on the
shuttle program while writing or co-writing 26 research reports
before retiring in 1986, NASA said.
She said she was most proud of her contributions to the first moon
mission, which included the calculations that synched the lunar
lander craft and the orbiting command module.
Johnson and her first husband, James Goble, who died in 1956, had
three daughters. She married Lieutenant Colonel James Johnson in
1959.
(Writing by Bill Trott; Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in
New York; Editing by Diane Craft, Lisa Shumaker and Alistair Bell)
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