Creola Katherine Coleman
A mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent US crewed spaceflights.
1918
2020
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia , USA
When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State’s President Dr John W. Davis, selected Johnson and two men to be the first Black students offered places at the State’s flagship school, West Virginia University.
1957 – The launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history—and Johnson’s life.
1957 – she provided some of the maths 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 Research Division (PARD).
1962 – as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of astronaut John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda.
Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman, farmer, and handyman. One of her life’s most notable moments was being handpicked to be one of three Black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools. This is one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By the age of 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically Black West Virginia State College. At 18 years she enrolled in the college itself, where she found a mentor in Professor W W Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in mathematics. She graduated with highest honours in 1937 and took a job teaching at a Black public school in Virginia
When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Johnson would talk about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS, later renamed Landsat) and authored or co-authored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she said.
2015, at age 97, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour.
2016 – she was presented with the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA astronaut Leland D Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award.
Parents – Joylette Coleman and Joshua Coleman
Spouse – James Francis Goble (1939 – 1956); James Johnson (1959-2019)
Children – Joylette Goble, Constance Goble, Katherine Goble
https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson
https://kidadl.com/articles/katherine-johnson-quotes-from-the-famous-nasa-mathematician
