While she was working for NASA, there was something going on called the “Space race.” The S pace R ace happened in the 1950s and ‘60s, where America and Russia were competing for t echnological advancement in spaceflight. She helped with the launch and landing coordinates for this journey to space. Katherine worked as an exceptional mathematician for NASA, helping Astronaut John Glenn into space on the spacecraft Friendship 7.

In college Katherine started studying English and French, but her professor and a lot of others told her to start studying S TEM ( science, technology, engineering, and math ) i nstead. Katherine got her Bachelor of Science in mathematics and French. She started E lementary School at age 5 (the usual), but with her crazy intelligence, she skipped an abundance of grades and entered High School when she was just 10 years old ! She was also 18 when she went to college! She graduated before her older siblings. Katherine Johnson skipped lots of grades. Moving on, Katherine’s town did not have a High School for her to attend once she finished middle school, and her dad insisted she had an education, so she went to a High School in another town!

As a child she was incredibly smart (and she still was as an adult!), but we will get to that in the next section. Her mom worked as a teacher and her dad as a farmer and custodian. Katherine Johnson was born on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. In 1939 she was one of the first three African A mericans to enroll in a graduate program at the W est V irginia University. Katherine Johnson was a very accomplished Black woman who worked as a mathematician for N.A.S.A., helping in the launch and landing coordinates for the Friendship 7.

Katherine johnson nasa fun facts