![]() ![]() In 1958, after NACA was reformulated into NASA, the Space Task group was formed with the goal of also getting a human into space. But this would take some time, as their Cold War rivals achieved another space “first” in April of 1961, when the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel to space, completing one orbit of the Earth in the Vostok 1 capsule another significant milestone in the Space Race. The launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957 made history and the United States hurried to catch up. After two weeks, Johnson left the pool of computers to join the flight research division where she analyzed data from flight tests. The West computing section was comprised of a group of African American women who manually carried out complex mathematical calculations and data analysis for NASA’s various teams. The Langley office was still segregated at the time, and Johnson therefore worked as a computer in the West Computing section, which was headed by Dorothy Vaughan - fellow trail blazer, mathematician, and computer programmer who became NASA’s first African American supervisor in 1949. It wasn’t until 1953 that she joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Langley laboratory, which would later become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Some biographical sources indicate that the environment at West Virginia University was less welcoming, and she found it difficult to continue with her studies as a research mathematician. This in itself is a trail blazing, once in a lifetime accomplishment, but Johnson was only getting started.Īfter her first session, she decided to leave school to start a family with her husband, eventually returning to teaching public school students. In 1939, when West Virginia College became an integrated school, she was hand-picked along with two other male students to be the first African American students to enroll in the university’s graduate program, studying mathematics. in mathematics, and graduated summa cum laude at the age of 18. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a Ph.D. She later attended West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University) where she studied mathematics under the mentorship of Professor W. ![]() Her family relocated to Institute, West Virginia when the time came for her to attend high school, as White Sulfur Springs did not have an African American high school. ![]() Katherine Johnson at her desk at NASA Langley Research Center in 1962. ![]()
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