This is part of a series of blog posts highlighting African Americans in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as part of NTEU’s celebration of Black History Month.
She broke both race and gender barriers to become a pioneer of the American space movement.
Katherine Johnson was a research mathematician and physicist whose calculations sent the first American to orbit earth.
A math prodigy who graduated from high school at age 14, Johnson became an early part of the NASA team when she was accepted into a pool of women performing math calculations, which Johnson referred to as virtual ‘computers who wore skirts.’ After being temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team, “they forgot to return me to the pool.”
Johnson went on to check the computer calculations that were used in John Glenn's historic orbit around the Earth in 1962.
She has been honored as a 2015 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Honor and NASA dedicated a building in her name at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.