Lesson 3 Beyond Barriers
Katherine Johnson, a “Computer” Who Looked Beyond Numbers
Katherine Johnson was born on August 26, 1918, ____ West Virginia, in the U.S., and was the youngest of four children in a black family.
Katherine was a math prodigy from early ____
Reflecting on her youth, Katherine once said, “I counted everything—the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the ____ of dishes, spoons, and forks I washed.”
She excitedly added, “I couldn’t wait to get to high school to take ____ and geometry.”
But Katherine’s hometown had a segregated education system, and black students ____ not enter high school.
So her father moved the ____ 200 kilometers away so that she could enter high school.
After graduating from high school in 1932, she was admitted to a black ____ at the age of fifteen.
By her junior year, she had taken all the math courses the college ____ offer.
Her mentor gladly offered special classes just for her, but he ____ not happy when he had to tell his outstanding student about her career opportunities.
“You would ____ a good research mathematician,” he told his seventeen-year-old student, “and I’m going to prepare you for this career.”
Katherine asked, “Where will I find a job?”
“That,” he replied, “will be ____ problem.”
The path ahead was unclear and full of obstacles, but Katherine knew she had the strength to make her ____ way.
In 1935, at the ____ of eighteen, Katherine graduated from college with highest honors and began her career as a teacher at a black public school.
____ that time, teaching was the only option available to her.
It was not until 1953 that ____ found a job at a NASA field center in Virginia.
There, she worked as one of the ____ computers” who did complex calculations manually to support white male engineers.
Though they greatly contributed to the space ____ they endured a lot of discrimination, including segregation in the office and being referred to with terms like “girl” despite being professional women.
Two weeks into the job, Katherine was reassigned to NASA’s elite space ____ division.
There, she was the only black female member ____ the staff.
Despite her enormous contributions,
Despite her enormous contributions, the important research meetings were ____ only among white staff members.
When she asked for permission to attend the meetings, her male ____ said that “the girls” didn’t usually go.
Katherine asked, “Is there a law ____ says I can’t go?”
The embarrassed male workers had no ____ but to let her in.
By asking questions no one had ever asked, Katherine ____ a discriminatory custom.
She had faced barriers, but her ____ to overcome them paid off.
She felt proud ____ continued her work with courage.
In 1960, she wrote a research paper with another ____ about how to place a spacecraft into orbit.
That was the first time a woman in her division received credit as an ____ of a research report.
Katherine’s remarkable calculations by hand were ____ more than digital computers.
In early 1962,
In early 1962, John Glenn, one of the pioneering American astronauts, was preparing to orbit the Earth for the first time in American ____
NASA used an electronic computer, first introduced ____ the space program a year earlier, to calculate the spaceship’s trajectory, but it made many minor errors.
Glenn, who was concerned about its accuracy, asked Katherine Johnson to double-check the machine’s ____ by hand.
“If she says the numbers are good,” he ____ “I’m good to go.”
Using only a pencil and ____ slide rule, Katherine spent a day and a half checking the calculations and finally made sure of them.
Eventually, Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit ____ Earth.
Katherine was also part of the team ____ performed calculations for Apollo 11, which sent the first three men to the Moon in 1969, and even the plan to put people on Mars, which is still being worked on today.
Katherine retired in 1986 after thirty-three years ____ NASA.
After that, she dedicated the rest of her life to ____ access to STEM education for Black girls.
For her contributions, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in ____ and said,
“Katherine G. Johnson refused to be limited by society’s expectations of her ____ and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach.”
In 2017, NASA dedicated a building in her honor in Virginia and named it the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research ____
She died on February 24, 2020, at the age of 101, but her pioneering ____ will never be forgotten.