Katherine Johnson

Hello there. My name is Katherine Johnson, and I have a secret to tell you: I have always loved to count. When I was a little girl, born on August 26th, 1918, in a town called White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road. I counted the forks and plates I washed. I even tried to count all the bright, twinkling stars in the night sky. Numbers were like a fun puzzle to me, and I wanted to solve them all. I loved school more than anything. Learning was my favorite game. I was so curious and learned things so quickly that my teachers let me skip a few grades. Can you believe it? I was ready to start high school when I was only ten years old. My family knew my love for learning was special, and they worked hard so I could keep going to school and follow my dreams.

Because I finished my schoolwork so fast, I was ready for college when I was just fourteen years old. After college, my first job was being a teacher, just like the teachers who had helped me so much. I loved helping children learn about numbers, too. But one day, I heard about a very special place looking for people who were good at math. It was called NACA, but you probably know it by its other name, NASA, the place that sends rockets into space. They needed people called ‘human computers.’ That sounds funny, doesn't it? Before there were electronic computers like we have today, people had to do all the big, tricky math problems by hand, with just a pencil, paper, and their amazing brains. I knew that was the job for me. I went to work with a group of other very smart African American women. We were a team, working together to figure out the safest ways for airplanes to fly. We had to be very careful and check our work over and over again. Every number had to be perfect because people's lives depended on our math. It was hard work, but I was so excited to be a part of something so important.

Soon, my job got even more exciting. We weren't just working on airplanes anymore; we were helping to send astronauts to the stars. On May 5th, 1961, I calculated the exact path for a brave astronaut named Alan Shepard to fly into space. He was the very first American to do it. Imagine drawing a map to space with numbers. That's what I did. A little while later, another astronaut, John Glenn, was getting ready for an even bigger trip. On February 20th, 1962, he was going to fly all the way around the Earth. NASA had a brand new electronic computer to figure out his flight path, but John was a little nervous about it. He said, 'Get the girl to check the numbers.' He meant me. He trusted my brain and my math more than the big new machine. So I did. I checked every single number, and he had a safe flight. I even helped figure out the math to send the first astronauts to walk on the Moon in the Apollo 11 mission. My journey taught me that if you are curious, ask questions, and love what you do, you can help the world do amazing things. You can reach for the stars, too.