Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're exploring
a stack of sources that chronicle the just extraordinary
career of Katherine Johnson, the mathematical
genius who truly earned the title human computer.
She really did. We're looking at her 33 years
of service, first to NASA and then, of course,
to NASA. And it's a career that spans from, you
know, the very earliest days of aviation research
right through to charting a path to Mars. It's
an incredible scope. It is. And our mission today
is to dig into not just what she calculated,
which is. mind boggling on its own. Oh, absolutely.
The paths for the first American in space, the
first orbital flight, Apollo 11. The moon landing.
Exactly. But we want to explore how she did it
and maybe more importantly, how her just unwavering
professional competence forced these huge systemic
barriers of race and gender to just crumble around
her. That is the ultimate takeaway, isn't it?
And we really need to weave that thread through
this whole deep dive because she was a mathematician
of such, I mean, such profound accuracy that
when NASA decided to adopt the very first electronic
computers, the astronauts themselves. Yeah, get
this. The people whose lives were on the line,
they were, you know, understandably nervous about
trusting a machine. And they insisted that Johnson
personally check the new digital numbers. That
one moment, it says everything. When John Glenn.
basically staked his life on her pencil and paper
calculations rather than a million -dollar machine.
Right. It's the perfect illustration of what
we are calling expertise as currency. And we're
going to spend a lot of time unpacking the context
of that moment. Because it didn't just happen
by accident. Not at all. It was built on a lifetime
of defying expectations every single step of
the way. Okay, so let's unpack this incredible
journey. Let's start right at the foundation.
How does a young woman from segregated West Virginia
become the guiding force behind this base race?
We have to look at her beginnings. You do. Katherine
Johnson was born Crayola Katherine Coleman in
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, back in
1918. And her background, it was already sort
of geared toward education. Her mother, Joylette,
was a teacher. And her father, Joshua, was a
remarkably industrious man. He was a lumberman,
a farmer, a handyman. And he also held a job
at the famous Greenbrier Hotel. And she was the
youngest of four. youngest of four. And what's
immediately striking from the sources is just
how early her mathematical genius became apparent.
And because of that, how quickly her family had
to make these immense sacrifices just to nurture
that talent. The sacrifices were they were systemic.
They were dictated by Jim Crow laws. Greenbrier
County, like so much of the segregated South,
simply did not offer public schooling for African
-American students past the eighth grade. So
that was it, the end of the line for education.
That was supposed to be it. So if her children
were going to have a high school education, her
parents had to engineer it themselves. And their
solution was profound. They arranged for the
children to attend high school in a town called
Institute in West Virginia. Right, which was
located on the campus of West Virginia State
College WVSC, a historically black college. So
how did the family even manage the logistics
of that? That's a huge undertaking. It wasn't
just a long commute. It was a fundamental split.
The family had to essentially operate two households.
They would split their time living in institute
for the entire school year just so the children
could access the higher education they deserved.
That dedication. Yeah. It speaks volumes about
what they saw in their children, especially in
Catherine. And that belief was. you know, very
quickly validated by what the sources call her
prodigy status. She wasn't just catching up.
She was leaping ahead. Way ahead. She was. She
enrolled in high school at the astonishing age
of 10. 10 years old, having skipped multiple
grades. And by the time she was 14, she had graduated
high school and immediately enrolled at WVSC.
To put that in perspective, her peers were likely
18 or 19 years old. She's a college freshman
when most kids are just starting high school.
Exactly. And once she was in college, it seems
her potential was immediately recognized by her
mentors. She didn't just study mathematics. She
basically exhausted the curriculum. She took
every single mathematics course WVSC offered.
Every single one. Her intellect just demanded
this rigorous attention, and she was lucky to
have two exceptional mentors. Right. There was
Angie Turner King, a chemist and mathematician.
Who guided her during high school and college.
But the truly unique relationship, the one that
really shaped her, was with W .W. Schieffelin
Claytor. And Claytor is a huge figure in academic
history. He was only the third African -American
to receive a doctorate in mathematics in the
entire country at that time. An absolute giant
in the field. Yeah. And he was so impressed by
her capacity that, according to the sources,
he actually created new advanced mathematics
courses just for her. Wait. He created new courses.
Just for her. Think about that. The college curriculum
itself wasn't challenging enough. So one of the
nation's foremost black mathematicians customized
her education. That tells you everything you
need to know about the depth of her talent. It
really does. So she graduates summa cum laude
at age 18 in 1937 with degrees in both mathematics
and French. But the journey wasn't over. She
married her first husband, James Goebel, taught
for a bit. And then in 1939, she decides to push
yet another boundary by enrolling in graduate
school. And this is a moment of profound, if
quiet, historical significance. She became the
very first African -American woman to attend
graduate school at West Virginia University in
Morgantown. And she didn't get there just by
applying. She got there because of a seismic
shift in civil rights law. Let's contextualize
that legal shift for a moment. This was a direct
result of the 1938 Supreme Court ruling, Missouri
X -Rule Gaines v. Canada. What exactly did that
ruling mandate? Why was it so critical for her?
So the Gaines ruling was a major crack in the
legal wall of separate but equal in higher education.
Lloyd Gaines had been denied admission to the
University of Missouri Law School because he
was black. And Missouri had no comparable law
school for black students. Exactly. So the Supreme
Court effectively ruled that states that offered
public higher education to white students had
to offer the same quality of education to black
students. They either had to create separate
but truly equal institutions, which was, you
know, almost impossible. Or they had to integrate
the existing ones. Or they had to integrate.
So the state of West Virginia was suddenly under
a lot of pressure. And instead of trying to build
a whole separate graduate math program, which
they couldn't do. They were forced to offer integration.
They were. And this ruling created this narrow
but absolutely critical window of opportunity
for Johnson. She was one of only three African
-American students selected to integrate the
graduate school program at WVU. And the only
woman. And the only woman. She was a test case
for desegregation policy, balancing the weight
of national legal history on her shoulders while
trying to master advanced calculus. That's just
immense pressure, especially as a young wife.
And then she decided to leave after the first
session. The sources are really clear that her
departure was purely focused on family. Right,
she was starting a family. It wasn't academic
failure or racial pressure. Not at all. She was
expecting her first child and chose to focus
on that. But the fact remains, she proved that
she belonged there. She cemented her role as
an educational pioneer, paving the way for those
who would follow, even if her own time there
was short. She had proven her genius, taken her
stand, and then prioritized her life at home.
Okay, let's jump ahead now to 1953. Her daughters
are older. She's ready to get back to work. This
is when she enters the world of aeronautics and
the legendary NACIA. Right. She returned to teaching
for a while, but in 1952, she heard that the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics NACIA,
the predecessor to NASA, was hiring mathematicians.
And not just any mathematicians. Specifically
for their West Area Computing section at the
Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton,
Virginia. She applied, and she accepted the job
offer in June 1953. This is where that term human
computer truly takes on meaning. What was the
day -to -day role of these women in the computing
pool? I mean, the job description sounds so abstract,
but the work was absolutely fundamental. It was
grueling, detail -oriented work. The sources
famously referred to them as virtual computers
who wore skirts. I love that phrase. It's perfect.
Their primary job in the early days was supporting
the aeronautics division. This meant working
with raw telemetry data from the plane's data
from the black boxes. So they weren't just reading
numbers. They were manually translating raw physics
into meaningful parameters. Precisely. They take
this raw data and using slide rules and charts
and just intense concentration, perform these
complex calculations for aerodynamic research.
For instance, some of her very early work included
calculating gust alleviation for aircraft. OK,
we need to stop there and explain that. What
exactly is gust alleviation and why do they need
human computers to calculate it? It's absolutely
critical for an aircraft's structural integrity.
When a plane is flying, it's constantly hitting
these sudden changes in air pressure gusts. Right,
turbulence. Exactly. And these gusts can stress
the plane's wings and its frame in really unpredictable
ways. The human computers had to calculate the
precise, instantaneous adjustments needed to
counteract these forces. So it's about keeping
the plane stable. Stable and, crucially, making
sure it didn't exceed the structural limits of
the material. It was precise, real -time risk
management translated into pure mathematics.
So she's dealing with the most complex, minute
aerodynamic forces, relying solely on her brain
and her tools. But she's doing this in a deeply,
deeply segregated environment. That's the core
tragedy and triumph of her early MPO years. Johnson
was assigned to the colored computer section,
which was supervised by the legendary Dorothy
Vaughn. And they were subject to Virginia state
segregation laws. And federal policy. So these
African -American women were mandated to use
separate facilities, separate working spaces,
separate dining areas, separate restrooms from
their white colleagues. It's such a jarring contradiction.
You have the brightest minds in the country solving
problems that will eventually take us to the
moon. And they couldn't share a water fountain.
Unbelievable. Yet Johnson's personal perspective
on how she navigated this is fascinating. It's
so rooted in her professional identity. Right.
She said that while she was aware of the segregation,
she. didn't feel it in her daily work. Her exact
quote was something like you had a mission and
you worked on it and it was important to you
to do your job. I didn't feel any segregation.
I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it. That
unwavering focus on the mission over the institutional
distraction. It seems like that was her shield.
It was. And that focus, that sheer competence,
is what rapidly propelled her out of the segregated
computing pool and into this elite all -male
domain. Her move was so fast and purely based
on merit. She was assigned initially, just temporarily,
to the all -male guidance and control division
of flight research. And they very quickly discovered
that she possessed this unparalleled knowledge
of analytic geometry. Let's elaborate on that.
Why was that specific field of math analytic
geometry the key that unlocked her future in
space exploration? Why was it so valuable for
trajectory work? Well, analytic geometry is basically
the study of geometry using a coordinate system.
It combines algebra and geometry. And for trajectory
work, especially in the pre -digital age, that
combination was indispensable. Because it lets
you visualize these complex paths. Exactly. You
can represent these three -dimensional orbital
path circles, parabolas, ellipses, using algebraic
equations. So instead of just abstract numbers,
she could translate the equations into plots
and graphs. that engineers could immediately
verify and understand. Precisely. For a human
computer, this was essential. It made quick,
accurate manual plotting and verification possible
in a way that, you know, pure abstract calculus
couldn't facilitate as quickly or intuitively.
She could see the path of a capsule through space
in real time on paper. And her new colleagues
recognized this immediately. Oh, yeah. The famous
anecdote is that they just forgot to return her
to the pool. She was simply too valuable. That
is a moment where her expertise truly starts
to dismantle those systemic barriers. Her skill,
not her gender or race, became the only metric
that mattered. She made herself indispensable.
But even after moving out of the color computer
section, she ran headfirst into the deeply entrenched
gender discrimination of the era. Right. The
work was the same, but the credit wasn't. Not
at all. Women were historically forbidden from
putting their names on official reports in her
division. So she'd overcome one barrier only
to slam into another one. How did she break that
crucial policy of getting her name on the reports?
She approached it with the same... quiet, but,
you know, firm assertiveness she used to navigate
segregation. She just demanded what she had earned.
She insisted on being in the meetings. The editorial
and review meetings, places where absolutely
no women had gone before. And her logic was simple
and undeniable. I did the work, so I should be
there. She saw herself as a scientist first.
And the sources have a great anecdote about her
colleague, Ted Skopinski, that really sealed
the deal. Yes, this was the turning point. Around
1960, she's working closely with Skopinski on
this major technical note. And their supervisor,
Henry Pearson, who was notoriously skeptical
of women in that high -level role, was pushing
Skopinski to finish the draft. But Skopinski
had to leave town. He had to leave for Houston.
So under pressure, he basically throws up his
hands and tells Pearson, Catherine should finish
the report. She's done most of the work anyway.
That's a brilliant move. It left the supervisor
with no choice. None. Johnson finished the report.
And as a result, her name appeared on that 1960
NASA technical note. Determination of azimuth
angle at burnout for placing a satellite over
a selected Earth position. And that was the first
time a woman in her division was officially credited.
as a co -author a massive quiet victory that
set a precedent for all the women who followed
her and from 1958 onward after nasi became nasa
she worked for the spacecraft controls branch
right up until she retired in 1986. which brings
us to the core of her historical contribution
calculating the success of the space race. This
is when the stakes moved from a plane's wing
stability to ensuring a human life could reach
orbit and return. It's a completely different
level of pressure. The transition from aeronautics
to astronautics was a huge leap, and Johnson
was right there making the calculations for Project
Mercury. America's very first... crude space
effort. Right. And she was responsible for calculating
the trajectory for Alan Shepard's flight on May
5, 1961, which made him the first American in
space. And that's more than just knowing where
the rocket is going. You need precise... Timing
for launch windows, contingency plans. That's
right. She didn't just calculate the ballistic
arc. She calculated the launch window, that precise
moment in time when all the gravitational and
orbital conditions aligned for a safe launch.
And the backup charts? Critically, yes. She plotted
backup navigation charts for the astronauts to
use in case of electronic failures. Remember,
these early missions were incredibly primitive
compared to today. Her accuracy was also key
for search and rescue. Essential. the recovery
crews to quickly find Shepard's Freedom 7 capsule
after splashdown in the ocean. Her work in 61
established her reliability, but it was 1962
that cemented her legendary status. This leads
right to that John Glenn anecdote we teased at
the start. The Friendship 7 mission. This was
supposed to be the first American orbital flight,
a much more complex problem. And for this, NASA
was finally transitioning to using these new
electronic digital computers to calculate the
orbit. But while the machines were powerful,
there was this profound skepticism among the
engineers and especially the astronauts about
their reliability. The stakes were just too high
to trust this untested digital future. And John
Glenn himself was the one who demanded the human
verification. What did he say exactly? He famously
requested that Johnson personally recheck the
computer's output. His words, as they recounted,
were that if that girl said the numbers were
right, then he was ready to fly. That girl. That
girl. He refused to launch unless she had verified
the machine's calculations by hand. That is just
an astonishing historical footnote. The future
of the American space program, the nation's trust
in this groundbreaking million -dollar electronic
age, it all rested on one woman's ability to
work through pages of equations with a pencil
and paper. It completely underscores the power
of reputation and competence. In that moment,
Johnson's proven accuracy superseded faith in
the new technology. And she did it. She spent
days working around the clock. reproducing the
computer's entire flight plan, verifying its
trajectory, launch windows, everything. When
she finally signed off on the numbers, Glenn
flew. So her work wasn't just for Glenn's safety.
It was about establishing confidence in digital
computing for the entire agency moving forward.
She was the ultimate quality control. She taught
the U .S. space program how to trust the future
by verifying it with the past. Absolutely. And
as the missions grew more ambitious, so did her
role. She was critical throughout the entire
Apollo program. In 1969, she helped calculate
the trajectory for the historic Apollo 11 flight
to the moon. It's a little bittersweet to think
that she charted the path for humanity's first
steps on another world. But she wasn't even in
mission control when it happened. No, she was
at a meeting in the Pocono Mountains at the time.
She recounted watching the first steps on the
moon crowded around a small television screen
with her colleagues. Even in that moment, she
was just focused on the next set of calculations.
And the next set of calculations became arguably
the most crucial of her entire career. The crisis
of Apollo 13 in 1970. Her contributions during
Apollo 13 were, without a doubt, life -saving.
When the oxygen tank exploded, the mission was
aborted. Suddenly, these astronauts were facing
imminent peril. Their primary navigation systems
were offline. They had limited power. Limited
everything. They needed a way to manually determine
their position accurately to correct their course
and ensure a safe return path to Earth. And the
sources highlight her role in creating the one
-star observation system. Can you detail the
problem they faced and how her system practically
solved it? So the standard navigation procedure
relied on sighting multiple stars, usually two
or three, to get a precise fix on their location.
But that was impossible. It was impossible. Because
of the debris field from the explosion, the limited
visibility, the power constraints, using multiple
stars was off the table. So Johnson's task was
to figure out how to navigate using minimal damaged
resources. Exactly. She used her deep knowledge
of celestial mechanics and analytic geometry
to devise a system where the astronauts only
needed to sight one single star to determine
their location with enough accuracy to get home.
That is a phenomenal piece of rapid response
applied mathematics. It is. She had to create
these complex charts and backup procedures that
accounted for all the gravitational variables,
the Earth's rotation, the changing position of
the damaged spacecraft, and condense it all down
to a single navigational input. That's the ultimate
test of an expert. Not just solving a problem,
but solving an unprecedented crisis under an
impossible deadline. She wasn't just calculating
a path. She was calculating an escape route.
That is how she saw it. She recalled the difference
in focus. Everybody was concerned about them
getting there. We were concerned about them getting
back. Her system gave the crew the tools they
needed to make the necessary course corrections
that ultimately allowed them to splash down safely.
Her impact didn't stop with the moon, though.
Before she retired in 1986, she continued to
influence the future of the agency. Yeah, she
rounded out her career contributing to the Space
Shuttle Program, focusing on the aerodynamics
and orbital mechanics of reusable flight. She
also worked on the Earth Resources Satellite
Program. An early foray into studying our own
planet from orbit. Right. And perhaps most futuristically,
she contributed to the preliminary plans and
calculations for a human mission to Mars. A phenomenal
33 -year run. From gust alleviation in the 50s
to charting the first steps for a Mars mission
in the 80s, her career just underpins virtually
every critical phase of U .S. space exploration.
It really does. And that contribution, you know,
it wasn't recognized with the full scope of civilian
honors until much, much later in her life. Before
we get to the honors, let's just briefly touch
on her commitment after retirement. She didn't
just fade away. Not at all. She became a major
champion for the next generation. She spent her
later decades actively encouraging students,
particularly minority and female students, to
pursue careers in STEM. She wanted to make sure
they didn't face the same barriers she did. And
she wanted them to understand that competence
was their strongest advocate. And she left a
massive technical legacy, co -authoring 26 scientific
papers. Okay, now let's discuss the recognition.
which came relatively late, really gaining steam
after the hidden figure story became more widely
known. The honors were immense, and they culminated
in the highest civilian distinctions. In 2015,
President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential
Medal of Freedom. The highest civilian honor
in the United States. It is, and Obama specifically
said that Johnson refused to be limited by society's
expectations of her gender and race while expanding
the boundaries of humanity's reach. And that
timing is important. It's just before the film
came out. And the honors just kept pouring in
after that, including the Congressional Gold
Medal in 2019. And beyond the government, the
aerospace community itself cemented her legacy.
In 2016, she received the Silver Snoopy Award.
Which is often called the Astronauts Award. It
is. It's for outstanding contributions to mission
success. And it's a pin that has actually flown
into space. It really highlights the respect
she commanded among the flyers themselves. And
NASA has literally written her name into its
buildings, into the firmament. They named two
major facilities after her. That's right. The
first was the Katherine G. Johnson Computational
Research Facility, dedicated in 2017 at Langley.
A powerful statement, naming a major computational
center after the greatest human computer. And
the second. The Katherine Johnson Independent
Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont,
West Virginia, renamed in 2019. Verification
and validation, the core of her life's work,
permanently attached to her name. And her name
is now literally orbiting the Earth. It is, which
is just a perfect tribute. In 2020, the U .S.
Space Force named a GPS satellite the Crayola
Catherine Johnson. And in 2021, Northrop Grumman
named its Cygnus supply spacecraft for the ISS
Catherine Johnson. There was even a commercial
satellite named Catherine. The cultural recognition,
of course, was driven hugely by the 2016 film
Hidden Figures. Absolutely. She was portrayed
by Taraji P. Henson, and the film's success just
brought her story to the masses. She received
a massive standing ovation. the Academy Awards.
It really cemented her place in the public consciousness.
And that media exposure just fueled this huge
wave of educational honors. She was inducted
posthumously into the National Women's Hall of
Fame in 2021, the National Aviation Hall of Fame
in 2024. And her impact is visible at the community
level, too. Right. Multiple schools across the
country are named for her now. Virginia, Texas,
Washington, California, all over. And yes, even
pop culture recognized her importance when Mattel.
released a Barbie doll in her likeness in 2018.
That's when you know you've made it. She is now
a universally recognized symbol of intellectual
triumph over adversity. She lived a remarkably
long life. She was married twice, had three daughters,
and lived to the incredible age of 101, passing
away in 2020. Her death was met with widespread
national mourning. NASA's administrator called
her an American hero whose pioneering legacy
will never be forgotten. So what does this all
synthesize into? We've covered this massive breadth
of her career, from defying segregation laws
in education to calculating the safety of astronauts
returning from the moon. The summary takeaway
from this deep dive is, I think, very clear.
Katherine Johnson was a mathematical genius who
had to fight state segregation laws just to get
a basic education. Right. Yet she channeled that
talent into becoming the single most trusted
human asset in the burgeoning American space
program. Her calculations were fundamental to
achieving America's greatest technical triumphs
of the 20th century. And the core synthesis is
exactly where we started. That competence and
mastery are not just professional skills. They
are powerful, tangible tools for overcoming systemic
bias. Her knowledge of analytic geometry was
unparalleled. Her rock -solid reputation for
accuracy. Those were the keys that unlocked access
to the highest echelons of space exploration,
regardless of the era's deeply embedded prejudices.
Her expertise was her undeniable currency. It
transcended the color of her skin and the gender
barrier of her division. When the astronaut said,
I trust her numbers more than the machine, He
was validating that very idea. That verifiable,
consistent competence is the ultimate force multiplier
in any career. And that leads us to our final
provocative thought for you, the listener. Katherine
Johnson achieved breakthroughs, in part by simply
asserting her right to be present. She didn't
wait for permission to be invited to those editorial
meetings where no women had gone before. She
just walked in and told people she belonged there.
Because she had done the necessary mission -critical
work. So consider this power of expertise as
currency in your own professional life. How can
you leverage your own verified, undeniable knowledge
and confidence to break down barriers in your
field? Right. If you've put in the hours, if
you've done the calculation, how do you assert
your right, not politely ask, but actively demand
a seat at the table when your expertise proves
that you're essential to the mission's success?
Something to mull over as you pursue your own
big launches. Thanks for joining us for the deep
dive. We'll be back next time with another stack
of sources.