INSPIRATION / MATHEMATICS, CURIOSITY & TRUST
Katherine
Johnson
She knew
how to know.
The person behind
an answer worth trusting.
Katherine Johnson’s story is often introduced through the moment someone trusted her.
Before John Glenn’s 1962 orbital flight, he wanted her to verify the electronic computers’ calculations. NASA’s biography describes her running the numbers through the same equations on a desktop mechanical calculating machine.
It is a remarkable expression of confidence in a colleague. I am just as interested in the work that made such confidence reasonable.
A number is easy to repeat. Understanding it well enough to check it is something else. It requires knowing what the calculation describes, how its parts relate and where a mistake could hide.
Johnson had that command. Her contribution belonged to a larger technical effort in which people had to be able to depend on one another’s work.
What I admire is the substance behind being considered dependable. There is no shortcut from wanting to inspire confidence to doing work that deserves it.
NASA TECHNICAL NOTE
D-233
T. H. Skopinski
Katherine G. Johnson
September 1960
Two years before Glenn’s flight, Johnson’s name appeared beside T. H. Skopinski’s on NASA technical note D-233.
The report addresses a beautifully concrete problem: how to arrange a satellite’s path so that it passes over a chosen place on Earth. The planet, inconveniently for anyone hoping for a simple drawing, keeps turning.
The archive’s abstract describes relationships between the satellite’s position in its orbital plane and the latitude and longitude beneath it. It also describes examples involving eastward and westward launches, taking the Earth’s shape into account.
That specificity makes her contribution easier to appreciate. There was a physical situation to describe, mathematics to establish and a result other people needed to use.
Her name belongs on that work. Reading the authorship record brings the person and the contribution together without requiring either to become a slogan.
I find something deeply satisfying in that. A life can inspire us, and there can also be a particular piece of work we can point to and say: she helped make this.
Belief, made practical.
Before there was a spacecraft to track, there was a teacher who recognized what she might do.
The Irish Times obituary describes how William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor developed special classes for Johnson at West Virginia State after she had worked through the available mathematics courses.
He gave his belief in her ability a practical form. There was more to learn, and he helped make it available.
I admire that kind of teaching. Praise can identify promise. Preparation gives that promise somewhere to go.
The same account places her career within the racial and gender barriers of the period, including the segregation of Black women mathematicians at Langley. The injustice belongs in the story alongside the achievement.
A person’s talent does not make an institution’s exclusions less real. It makes the waste involved in those exclusions easier to see.
Johnson’s work enlarges our sense of what she could do. Her story also asks how much ability goes unrecognized when access depends on somebody else’s narrow idea of who belongs.
She knew
the answer.
She asked
anyway.
One of my favorite details about Johnson has nothing to do with a launch.
In NASA’s account of her education, she recalled asking questions in Claytor’s class when she could see that other students had not understood. He thought she should already know the answers. Eventually she explained that she did.
She was asking for them.
There is a lovely confidence in being willing to appear momentarily uncertain so somebody else can understand. It puts learning ahead of the performance of already knowing.
Later, when she was told that women did not attend the technical briefings, she asked whether a law prevented it. She began attending.
Both stories make her curiosity feel active. A question can help someone follow an explanation. It can also make a familiar exclusion explain itself.
I admire how much useful movement those questions contain. She wanted to understand the work and participate in it fully. She could also notice when another person needed a chance to catch up.
There is a temptation to let one famous request stand in for an entire career. Glenn’s confidence in Johnson is memorable, but the mathematics existed before he asked for the check.
That distinction matters to me. Recognition can reveal an achievement to a wider audience. It does not bring the achievement into existence.
The quiet parts of expertise deserve attention too: understanding a problem precisely, following an argument far enough to discover its weakness, explaining a method so that another person can use it. They rarely arrive with a dramatic soundtrack. They are how the work becomes reliable.
Johnson’s story gives those activities a human presence. It reminds me to look for the person behind an answer and to be interested in how she arrived there.
Accuracy includes authorship. A history that preserves the result while losing the people who produced it is missing something essential.
Understanding
can be generous.
I return to the classroom detail because it lets us see a quality that a list of accomplishments might miss.
Brilliance can make a person impatient with everyone else. It can also make her unusually good at recognizing the point where someone has become lost.
There is generosity in using understanding that way. Knowledge becomes something another person can move toward, rather than something that keeps them at a distance.
That is the Katherine Johnson I want this tribute to make room for: the mathematician whose methods could be trusted, the colleague who wanted to understand more and the student who noticed the people beside her.
A confident tone cannot do the work of knowing. She did that work, and she helped make it possible for others to follow.
About Katherine Johnson
What did Katherine Johnson do for John Glenn’s flight?
Before Glenn’s 1962 orbital mission, Johnson checked the electronic computers’ calculations using the same equations and a desktop mechanical calculating machine.
What is NASA technical note D-233?
Published in September 1960 and coauthored by T. H. Skopinski and Katherine G. Johnson, it develops calculations for placing a satellite over a selected position on Earth.
When did Katherine Johnson work at Langley?
Johnson began at NACA’s Langley laboratory in 1953 and retired from NASA in 1986, after 33 years.
Sources: Margot Lee Shetterly’s NASA biography; the NASA Technical Reports Server record and abstract for D-233; Heather Deiss’s NASA account of Johnson’s education and career; the Irish Times obituary. The report discussion draws on its archival abstract.
Written by Rob Urban. For more of his writing, perspective and consulting, meet Rob.