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Day 19 - Katherine Johnson
Mar. 19th, 2018 03:36 pmKatherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson is a joy to read and write about! She was and is a kickass woman who went where no woman had gone before and certainly no black woman!
Katherine Johnson was born in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. She graduated high school at 14 and college at 18. She was a math teacher until 1952, when someone told her NACA (The pressures for NASA) was looking for mathematicians and they were hiring African American mathematicians as well as white one. She went to work for them in 1953.
She became what she referred to as a human calculator and worked on the numbers needed to for space flight. She has commented that race was not so much a problem for the women but the fact that they were women in a man’s world and weren’t even allowed to sign their own work.
We needed to be assertive as women in those days – assertive and aggressive – and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be. In the early days of NASA women were not allowed to put their names on the reports – no woman in my division had had her name on a report. I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston ... but Henry Pearson, our supervisor – he was not a fan of women – kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, "Katherine should finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway." So Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my name went on it, and that was the first time a woman in our division had her name on something.
A few years ago, Johnson became well known to all from the movie Hidden Figures, which was about her and the other black women mathematicians who worked for NASA during the 60s and 70s. It is said has confirmed that John Glenn really did say “Get the girl (referring to Johnson)to check the numbers,” before he was comfortable taking off on his historical flight to orbit the earth.
Katherine Johnson is 100 and lives with her husband in Hampton, Virginia.
In the day…
Recently…
Katherine Johnson is a joy to read and write about! She was and is a kickass woman who went where no woman had gone before and certainly no black woman!
Katherine Johnson was born in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. She graduated high school at 14 and college at 18. She was a math teacher until 1952, when someone told her NACA (The pressures for NASA) was looking for mathematicians and they were hiring African American mathematicians as well as white one. She went to work for them in 1953.
She became what she referred to as a human calculator and worked on the numbers needed to for space flight. She has commented that race was not so much a problem for the women but the fact that they were women in a man’s world and weren’t even allowed to sign their own work.
We needed to be assertive as women in those days – assertive and aggressive – and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be. In the early days of NASA women were not allowed to put their names on the reports – no woman in my division had had her name on a report. I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston ... but Henry Pearson, our supervisor – he was not a fan of women – kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, "Katherine should finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway." So Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my name went on it, and that was the first time a woman in our division had her name on something.
A few years ago, Johnson became well known to all from the movie Hidden Figures, which was about her and the other black women mathematicians who worked for NASA during the 60s and 70s. It is said has confirmed that John Glenn really did say “Get the girl (referring to Johnson)to check the numbers,” before he was comfortable taking off on his historical flight to orbit the earth.
Katherine Johnson is 100 and lives with her husband in Hampton, Virginia.
In the day…
Recently…
