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.įrom 2015, President says Katherine Johnson "was a pioneer who broke the barriers of race and gender, showing generations of young people that everyone can excel in math and science, and reach for the stars." RIP. She grew up in West Virginia at a time when educational opportunities for blacks were limited because of segregation. She wished it away, willed it out of existence inasmuch as her daily life was concerned.”Īs 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 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. Johnson always said she was too busy with her work to be concerned with racism. But they did their work in facilities separate from white workers and were required to use separate restrooms and dining facilities. “He knew I had done (the calculations) before for him and they trusted my work,” Johnson told the Washington Post in 2017.ĭuring 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. “Get the girl to check the numbers,” he said. Astronaut John Glenn thought so much of her that he insisted Johnson be consulted before his historic earth-orbiting flight in 1962.
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. Johnson attended the 2017 Oscars ceremony, joining the film's cast in presenting an award for documentaries, and was given a standing ovation.
Katherine johnson nasa family movie#
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 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. 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. Today, we celebrate her 101 years of life and honor her legacy of excellence that broke down racial and social barriers: /dGiGmEVvAW- NASA February 24, 2020 We're saddened by the passing of celebrated #HiddenFigures mathematician Katherine Johnson.
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