William Schieffelin Claytor, encouraged Johnson to become a research mathematician and created a geometry class just for her. After teaching for a few years, Johnson was accepted to West Virginia University's graduate math program, and in 1939, she became the first black woman to attend the s...
Johnson was one of the "computers" who solved equations by hand during NASA's early years and those of its precursor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Johnson and other black women initially worked in a racially segregated computing unit in Hampton, Virginia, that wasn...
Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson who worked at the NASA research center in Hampton, Virginia. At a young age, Katherine was advanced in the subject of math leading her to skip several grades. Fast forwarding to 1961, Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary are working at the colored computer...
The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history—and Johnson's life. In 1957, she provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft ...