How Katherine Johnson Broke Racial & Gender Barriers at NASA in the 1950s

In honor of Black History Month, learn how Katherine Johnson broke racial and gender barriers at NASA in the 1950s. Van Metre’s Resident Lifestyle Blogger and Diversity & Inclusion council member, Ernie Kyger, explores this topic.

Key takeaways:

• Katherine Johnson, physicist and mathematician, helped launch the first use of digital electronic computers at NASA, the independent federal government agency that handles aerospace research, aeronautics and the civilian space program.
  
  
• Johnson was a math prodigy who graduated from high school at the age of 14 and earned a double degree in math and French from West Virginia State College at 18.
  
  
• Her talent with numbers and accuracy was so highly regarded that her sign-off was paramount for NASA to modernize itself with digital computers.
  
  
• Many black women were hired by NASA in the early 1950s to work in the Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson came on board in 1953 and initially worked in a pool of black women who all were performing math calculations.
  
  
• It was Johnson who helped calculate the orbit for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon. And it was Johnson who co-authored 26 scientific papers, which NASA still links to via its archives.
  
  
• Her story was told in grand Hollywood fashion. Oscar-nominated actor and Golden Globe winner Taraji P. Henson brought her life to the big screen in the critically acclaimed Hidden Figures.