Katherine Johnson

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Katherine Johnson, 2008

Katherine G. Johnson (born Coleman , meanwhile married Goble ; born August 26, 1918 in White Sulfur Springs , West Virginia , † February 24, 2020 in Newport News , Virginia ) was an American mathematician of African American descent. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the end of 2015 for her contributions to the calculation of flight paths for the Mercury program and the first manned flight to the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission .

Life

Youth and education

Johnson was born on August 26, 1918, the youngest child of Joylette and Joshua Coleman, who already had three children: Charles, Margaret and Horace. Her mother was a former teacher, her father a farmer, who sometimes worked as a caretaker at the Greenbrier Hotel . Her enthusiasm and talent for mathematics became apparent very early on, as she said she counted everything. “I counted steps. I counted the plates I washed. I knew how many steps it was from our house to church. ”Once, when she followed her brother into school, the teachers were amazed to find that she could already read and let her attend class. Therefore, when Johnson started school herself at six, she was sent straight to second grade.

She skipped a class one more time when a new, small school with only a few teachers opened at the beginning of her fifth year. The best fifth graders, including Katherine, were grouped directly into sixth grade. Her father, who himself dropped out of school after the 6th grade, attached great importance to the education of his children. For African-Americans, White Sulfur Springs had only schools that ended after 8th grade, so Coleman enrolled the siblings in an African-American high school at the West Virginia Collegiate Institute, over two hundred miles away. Because of this, Johnson, her siblings, and her mother moved to Institute, West Virginia, each September, where their mother worked as a maid while their father stayed in White Sulfur Springs.

Having skipped two grades, Johnson entered high school when she was only ten. Her teachers supported and encouraged her as much as they could. Her director, Sherman H. Gus, often accompanied her on the way home and taught her constellations, which sparked her interest in astronomy. When she was only fourteen, she finally moved to West Virginia College, for which she had received a scholarship . In her sophomore year, her lecturer, Dr. William W. Schieffelin Claytor, took advanced courses in higher mathematics to help her get into research, and Johnson was the only student to take analytical geometry . She majored in French and mathematics and graduated with honors in 1937 with a Bachelor of Science in both subjects at the age of 18 .

Professional career

Johnson in 1966

At first, Johnson worked as a teacher like her mother. She has taught math and French at various elementary schools and high schools . In 1940, she was offered postgraduate studies at West Virginia State College (WVSC, now West Virginia State University ) , but was forced to give it up and resume teaching because of her husband's cancer. In 1952 she first heard from her sister in Newport News that there were new career opportunities for black mathematicians at the nearby Langley Research Center . In 1953, she began her NASA career, initially at its predecessor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), as a computer in the West Area Computing Unit . Their task was to calculate data from wind tunnel experiments using mathematical formulas and to present them graphically. She also evaluated flight recorders .

The black mathematicians, referred to by Johnson as “computers in skirts”, had a separate office from their white colleagues because of the racial segregation practiced in the USA and could be “loaned” to other departments. In this way, after only two weeks, Johnson and a colleague initially entered the flight research department for a limited period, which until then had consisted exclusively of white men. Unlike the other computers , Johnson asked questions, wanted to know the context and background, and insisted on attending the department's briefings , which had previously been reserved for men. Johnson asked if women were banned from attending, and when it was not, she became the first woman to attend the briefings. “The women did what they were told. They didn't ask questions or go beyond their duties. I followed up, I wanted to know why. They got used to the fact that I asked questions and that I was the only woman. "

Through her knowledge of analytical geometry, Johnson quickly made herself indispensable for her new colleagues, who “forgot to leave me” after the deadline. At the time, she was the only woman who made the jump from computers to another department. In 1958 the NACA became NASA. Since there were no specialist books on the subject of space travel, Johnson and her colleagues had to improvise and sometimes write the books themselves. Together with her colleague Ted Skopinski, she wrote the theoretical treatise Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite over a Selected Earth Position (in German: Determination of the azimuthal angle at the end of the burn in order to place a satellite over a selected position on earth ). It was her first scientific publication and also the first time that a woman from this department was officially named as a co-author:

“I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave us and go to Houston, but our manager Pearson - not a fan of women - urged him to finish the report we were working on first. Finally, Ted said to him, 'Katherine should finish the report, she did most of the work anyway.' Ted didn't give Pearson a choice: I finished the report and it had my name on it, and that was the first time a woman in our department had had her name on anything. "

The paper served as the theoretical basis for manned space travel and Johnson's calculations made the success of Alan Shepard possible , who completed the second manned flight in the history of space travel as part of the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission in 1961 . A year later, astronaut John Glenn asked her to check the computer- calculated orbit of his flight as part of the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission , as he trusted Johnson's capabilities more. In this way, Johnson was also involved in the first orbit of an American astronaut. Towards the end of the 1960s, Johnson calculated the correct orbit for the Apollo 11 space mission and thus contributed significantly to the success of the first moon landing. In the event of a computer failure, she developed a manual navigation scheme based on fixed stars. Even when Apollo 13 had to return to Earth in an unscheduled manner after the explosion of a fuel tank and the forced shutdown of the navigation computer, Johnson made the calculations for the way back. She herself admitted that she often had to fall back on her intuition during her work , as much was still untested, and that one of the astronauts said of her: "I would trust Kate's intuition at any time." Johnson worked until her retirement in 1986 is also involved in the first phase of the space shuttle program.

Private life

Johnson married James Francis Goble in 1939, with whom they had three daughters, Constance, Joylette and Kathy. Her husband died of a brain tumor in 1956 and three years later she married Lieutenant Colonel James A. Johnson, a Korean War veteran . After her retirement, she continued to attend events and stayed in contact with schools and universities, where she encouraged schoolchildren and students to study science and take up relevant professions. She also kept in contact with astronauts and NASA employees.

Awards

In the USA

Katherine Johnson has received numerous awards for her work and pioneering role throughout her life:

  • 1967: NASA Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft and Operations Team award
  • 1967: Apollo Group Achievement Award
  • 1971: NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award (in German: Award of the NASA Langley Research Center for special achievements )
  • 1980: NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
  • 1984: NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
  • 1985: NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
  • 1986: NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
  • 1998: Honorary Doctor of Law from SUNY Farmingdale
  • 1999: Outstanding Alumnus of the Year (in German: Outstanding Alumna of the Year ) of West Virginia State College
  • 2006: Honorary Doctorate from Capitol College, Laurel, Maryland
  • 2010: Honorary Doctorate from Old Dominion University , Norfolk, Virginia
  • 2015: Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • 2019: Fellow of the Computer History Museum

In November 2015 , Johnson was honored by President Barack Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States , for her achievements as a pioneer in space travel . On February 22, 2016, a bench with a plaque was dedicated to her in her home town of Hampton, which is to be set up in front of the Virginia Air and Space Center in the summer. On May 5, 2016, a NASA data center that was still under construction was named after Katherine Johnson in a solemn ceremony in which the then 97-year-old took part. In addition, Katherine Johnson is one of only 24 scholars in the collection of the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania . Together with other African American scientists, she was portrayed in the book Hidden Figures: The African American Women Mathematicians Who Helped NASA and the United States Win the Space Race: An Untold Story , published in September 2016 . A short time later, the director Theodore Melfi also set a cinematic monument with the biopic Hidden Figures, based on Shetterly's book - Unrecognized Heroines Johnson and her colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson and thus their "untold" story.

In February 2019, NASA named the Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, after Katherine Johnson.

Barbie doll

Mattel has released a Johnson Barbie doll as part of the new Barbie Inspirational Women collection.

literature

Web links

Commons : Katherine Johnson  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Margalit Fox: Katherine Johnson Dies at 101; Mathematician Broke Barriers at NASA. In: The New York Times. February 24, 2020, accessed February 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Katherine Johnson. National Visionary; accessed on March 8, 2016: “I counted the steps. I counted the plates that I washed. [...] I knew how many steps there were from our house to church. "
  3. ↑ a b c d e Katherine Johnson. National Visionary; accessed on March 8, 2016
  4. ↑ She Was a Computer When Computers Wore Skirts . NASA; Retrieved March 19, 2016
  5. ↑ a b c Thomson Gale: Johnson, Katherine Coleman Goble . encyclopedia.com; accessed on March 8, 2016
  6. ^ A b c Katherine Johnson: A Lifetime of STEM . NASA November 6, 2013; Retrieved March 19, 2016
  7. ^ A b c Yvette Smith: Katherine Johnson: The Girl Who Loved to Count . NASA, Nov. 24, 2015, Feature; accessed on March 14, 2016.
  8. ↑ The computer woman . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 2018 ( online ).
  9. ^ West Virginian of the Year: Katherine G. Johnson . Charleston Gazette-Mail, December 26, 2015; accessed on March 12, 2016
  10. ^ Katherine Johnson: A Lifetime of STEM . NASA November 6, 2013; Retrieved on March 19, 2016: “The women did what they were told to do […] They didn't ask questions or take the task any further. I asked questions; I wanted to know why. They got used to me asking questions and being the only woman there. "
  11. ↑ Thomson Gale: Johnson, Katherine Coleman Goble . encyclopedia.com; Retrieved March 8, 2016: “I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston […] but Pearson, our supervisor - who was not a fan of women - kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, 'Katherine should finish the report, she's done most of the work, anyway.' So Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my name went on it, and that was the first time that a woman in our division had her name on something. "
  12. ↑ a b Profile of Katherine Johnson on NASA's website; accessed on March 14, 2016.
  13. ↑ a b Knatokie Ford: Honoring NASA's Katherine Johnson, STEM Pioneer . on the White House website, Nov. 30, 2015.
  14. ^ Katherine Johnson honored with Bench in Downtown Hampton on NASA's website; accessed on March 27, 2016
  15. ^ Samuel McDonald: Computational Facility Named After Langley "Human Computer" Katherine Johnson . NASA May 6, 2016; accessed on October 10, 2016
  16. ^ Margot Lee Shetterly: Hidden Figures: The African American Women Mathematicians Who Helped NASA and the United States Win the Space Race: An Untold Story . accessed on March 14, 2016.
  17. ↑ Katja Iken: "Rocket Girls" by NASA. Women who shot men to the moon . one day , October 10, 2016.
  18. ↑ Hidden Figures . In: foxmovies.com. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  19. ↑ NASA: NASA Renames Facility in Honor of 'Hidden Figure' Katherine Johnson. In: NASA Press Release 19-007. February 22, 2019, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  20. ↑ The family threatens to take legal action because of Frida-Kahlo-Barbie orf.at, March 9, 2018, accessed March 9, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Johnson, Katherine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johnson, Katherine G .; Coleman, Katherine (maiden name); Goble, Katherine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician of African American descent
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 2020
Place of death Newport News , Virginia