Katherine Johnson RIP.

I heard the news this week that Katherine Johnson has passed away at the grand age of 101.

In all honesty I had no idea who she was until seeing the 2016 movie ‘Hidden Figures’. As a standalone film it is certainly worth a watch, you will not be disappointed. It is a piece of work that engages the mind and captures the heart. It tells the story of Katherine’s earlier life and that of some of her friends and colleagues.

Katherine was a child genius when it came to with maths and was soon working as a ‘computer’ at NASA. The film is set during the build-up and the beginning of the space race with Russia, at the same time the USA was still a segregated country where black people were well and truly clear where they stood (or sat).

At that time Katherine was also a widow with three young kids to care for after her husband died young from a brain tumour. So as well as the personal challenges she was also working in the ‘black’ block at NASA but their space program was in difficulty and the Russians were ahead of them.

Katherine’s reputation got her drafted in to the front line office where calculations, trajectories and orbital maths were done.

The irony was that at the time she literally WAS the main computer at NASA. Her comprehension of the subject left the rest of the team behind and they were reliant on her talent to predict everything from the speed, propulsions, understanding orbit, grid calculations as to where the capsule would be on earth when it returned.

She was one of the only women and certainly the only black worker in that team. She appeared to have challenges with colleagues who wanted the glory and were not willing to accept and acknowledge the gifted African-American in their ranks who they were reliant on for the data needed. She was also not allowed to use their bathroom nor was she not allowed to share their hot water urn for drinks among other things.

The situation was eventually realised by her boss and NASA became much more inclusive because of it. It opened the doors for change with women taking jobs in engineering departments and many of the black women from their segregated block were already ahead of the game as self-taught computer programmers after getting books on the subject….from a library they were not supposed to even be in. Indeed Katherine was a true inspiration.

Her skills and talent with mathematics kept her at NASA for over three decades working on the Apollo missions, the space shuttle project and even on the mission to Mars.

Under Obama’s presidency she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and it was one of many honours Katherine had bestowed upon her by those who appreciated the work she did and the contributions she made to her country, to mathematics and to our understanding of space voyages.