Fred Outten, President and Founder of ASEP (Acknowledging Special Events and Projects), announced today that “NASA’s Legendary mathematician, Katherine Johnson, has been selected to receive ASEP’s ‘Humanitarian of All Mankind (HOAM)’ Award (posthumously).” Katherine Johnson, (b. 8/26/1918) who sadly passed away on February 24, 2020, would have turned 106 years old on August 26, 2024.
“As we reflect on the life of Katherine Johnson, known as the Woman of the 20th Century, we are reminded of her incredible contribution to this nation and especially to the U.S. Space program as one of the many African American women who faced racial discrimination, known as the Human Computers, in the early days of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), renamed as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia,” Outten said.
A brilliant African American mathematician, Katherine Johnson was a child protégé who reached high school at age 10, entered college at age 15, and graduated summa cum laude with Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and French at age 18. She started her career as a teacher and even chose to make uniforms for the school’s majorettes because the hand-me-downs from the white schools were in such ruined condition. She was asked and accepted the challenge of being one of the three “Negro” students (and the only woman) to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate program. She later began her stellar 33-year career in aviation and aerospace upon her arrival at NACA in 1953. It is said that the Wright Brothers’ and Katherine Johnson’s contributions to aviation are forever linked. Perhaps one of Katherine Johnson’s most extraordinary, yet hidden, pioneering contributions to aviation history is her research in 1954, that helped to prevent wake turbulence accidents at a time of the need to address crowded air safety concerns stemming from an accident that involved a small Piper propeller plane that unexpectedly simply fell out of the sky and crashed to the ground. Her months of lengthy and tedious research and other similar investigations ultimately led to permanent changes in air traffic regulations mandating minimum distances between flight paths to prevent wake turbulence accidents. Katherine Johnson’s research has saved countless lives nationally and globally to this day every time one boards an airplane!
At NASA, Katherine Johnson’s unprecedented mathematical calculations of orbital mechanics, calculating trajectories, were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S.-crewed spaceflights, including for the Apollo missions. By 1958, Johnson had contributed to “Notes on Space Technology,” the space agency’s first comprehensive reference document on space flight. By 1959, she had prepared a trajectory analysis for a crewed suborbital flight.
In 1960, she co-authored the research report, “Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position,” laying out the equations that would form the basis of that crewed orbital space flight of John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission on February 20, 1962. Katherine was asked to verify the calculations when electronic computers at NASA were used to calculate the orbit. Glenn personally asked that Johnson hand-check the trajectory equations input into the IBM 7090 computer. Glenn is quoted, “Get the girl to check the numbers.” If she says the numbers are good, he told them, I’m ready to go, thereby trusting Katherine’s calculations over the computer system! Prior to John Glenn’s orbital flight,
Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission, the second person and first American spaceflight on May 5, 1961.
Katherine Johnson also helped to calculate the trajectory for the successful Apollo 11 landing on the moon on July 20, 1969, and its safe return to earth on July 24, 1969. She contributed calculations to the parking orbit of Apollo 11’s command and service module during that first crewed Moon landing. Her work helped fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s dream to win the Space Race against the Soviet Union at a time when our nation was caught up in an exceedingly dangerous race for space during the Cold War with the then #1 World Power, the Soviet Union (now Russia). It was a time when the Soviet’s Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, threatened to “bury” America. A time when the threat of nuclear annihilation through an Atomic War was very real!
Katherine Johnson spent the latter years of her career working on the Space Shuttle program and Earth Resources Satellite as well as on plans for a mission to Mars. Her work continues to be used to further the continued success of space exploration to this day. Ms. Johnson never forgot her roots as an educator by responding to invitations to visit classrooms where she inspired students about the role of mathematics in her life, and when she became too frail to go to them, students came to her to be inspired by her extraordinary life.
Among her many honors, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama on November 24, 2015, who among her many achievements, cited her as a pioneering example of African American women in STEM. Ms. Johnson was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019. On March 23, 2024, Women in Aviation International (WAI) inducted Katherine Johnson (posthumously) into their International Pioneer Hall of Fame for the Class of 2024 in Orlando, Florida. And on September 14, 2024, Katherine Johnson will be enshrined (posthumously) into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
Katherine Johnson’s story was untold for much too long! Despite the many awards and accolades she has received, including a book and movie of the same name, Hidden Figures, her story and contributions to our nation and indeed the world remain too seldom recognized by the general public and by institutions. “Given the current efforts to obscure, distort, ignore, and remove Black history from our educational system and society overall, we must keep Katherine Johnson’s story and her accomplishments at the forefront of our nation’s history throughout the year and especially as we honor her memory on the anniversary of her birthday every August 26th,” said Outten.
“Katherine Johnson’s lifetime achievements contributed to aviation safety and helped broaden the scope of space travel, charting new frontiers for humanity’s exploration of space and creating new possibilities for all humankind. She inspired countless students to learn about the benefits of STEM. For these reasons, ASEP believes that Katherine Johnson is most deserving of this prestigious HOAM Award,” said Outten. The HOAM award will be forwarded for inclusion in Katherine Johnson’s archives housed at the West Virginia University Libraries/West Virginia and Regional History Center
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