Katherine Johnson, the first African-American woman to conquer space

Hero of the biopic Hidden Figures , Katherine Johnson is one of the women whose work has allowed great advances to NASA but that history had hidden.

“I just did my job. NASA had a problem and I had the solution. “It is with these humorous phrases that Katherine Johnson recently summarized her career at The Washington Post. But whatever she says, at 98, this native of Virginia, born in 1918, has a more than impressive resume.

Katherine Johnson graduated at the age of 14 from high school , before moving to West Virginia State University for a specialization in mathematics a year later. She earned her degree in mathematics and French with honors in 1937, at only 18 years old. Her achivements would propel her to the front of the stage at a time when a woman, black in addition, had no place.

After graduation, Katherine Johnson began a teaching career, which she quickly abandoned to start a family with her husband, James Goble. Together, they have three daughters – Constance, Joylette and Katherine. But James Goble died of brain cancer in 1956. The woman of science must then overcome her bereavement and her status as a single mother.

However, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) “decided to recruit women during the Second World War, when men gone to the front began to miss, says Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the book Hiden Figures that inspired the film of the same name. From 1943, the ancestor of NASA published an advertisement in the black newspaper of the city, to recruit among teachers of mathematics in public schools. Until 1980, there will be 80 women to work there. “Among them, Katherine Johnson from 1953.

Because of the Jim Crow’s segregationist laws, differentiating American citizens by their skin color in the public space, Katherine Johnson and her colleagues work away in a building reserved for them. But that does not affect her: “I did not have time for that,” explained Katherine Johnson in an interview held in NASA’s archives in 2008. “My father always told us,” You are also gifted than anyone in this city, but you’re no better. ” Which explains why I do not feel inferior.”

A wisdom that allows her to work for NASA by calculating black box data from aircraft and other mathematical work. But in the middle of the cold war, NASA needs specialists in analytic geometry to get ahead of the Russians in the conquest of space. One of the few to master the discipline is Katherine Johnson. His ability to handle numbers is beyond comprehension. She does not hesitate to push the barriers even further since she manages to attend the meetings forbidden to women.

In 1959, Katherine Johnson succeeded in making the calculations for the first suborbital launch of Alan Shepard. Then in 1962, John Glenn, the first American astronaut to circumnavigate the Earth, asks before his first orbital flight that she herself checks for one last time the calculations of his trajectory. Subsequently, her gift for mathematics led her to determine the trajectory of the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon in July 1969, including the landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface.

In November 2015, Barack Obama presented to Katherine  the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest American civil honor. At the 89th Academy Awards, she went on stage to announce the award for best documentary, accompanied by actresses Taraji P. Henson (who portrays her on screen), Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe , heroines of Theodore Melfi’s movie.