In 1958, when NACA was dissolved and reformed into NASA, Johnson became the only female, and the only person of color, on the newly-formed Space Task Force charged with finding a way to put an American astronaut on the Moon. But in a time where they were separated from their peers and often overlooked Johnson, along with colleagues like Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Winston Jackson, were still able to distinguish themselves for their work. The West Area Computers got their name because Jim Crow laws segregated them into working in the west area of NACA's campus. Human mathematicians at the time were often called computers and NACA's female mathematicians were often ignominiously referred to as “the computers who wore skirts.” Even though they were paid less than their male counterparts, the thinking was that women had a natural attention to detail that made them ideal for the meticulous work of trajectory calculations. Her work calculating trajectories was crucial to the success of Apollo 11 as well as other several historic space missions.īorn in West Virginia in 1918, Johnson first joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1953, where she became a member of the West Area Computers, a group of African-American women tasked with performing the tedious calculations for guidance and navigation systems. Katherine Johnson, one of the key mathematicians behind America's space program, and a prominent figure in black American history, died Monday at the age of 101. Katherine Johnson at her desk at NASA in 1966.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |