About

Katherine Johnson was born as Creola Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia as the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman. Johnson showed strong mathematical abilities from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African-American students past the eighth grade, the Colemans arranged for their children to attend high school in Institute, West Virginia. After graduating from high school at 14, Johnson enrolled at West Virginia State, a historically black college. As a student, she took every math course offered by the college. She graduated summa cum laude in 1937, with degrees in mathematics and French, at age 18. She later took on a teaching job at a blak public school in Marion, Virginia.

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Although starting off with an easy, boring job, her big break was soon to come. At a family gathering, a family member told her about the NACA hiring mathematicians. She was soon hired and from 1953 to 1958, Johnson worked as a computer, analyzing topics such as gust alleviation for aircraft. It was staffed by white male engineers. In keeping with state racial segregation laws, and federal workplace segregation introduced under President Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century, Johnson and the other African-American women in the computing pool were required to work, eat, and use restrooms that were separate from those of their white peers. From 1958 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson worked as an aerospace technologist, moving during her career to the Spacecraft Controls Branch. She calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961 space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space.