How Did Katherine Johnson Impact The Space Race

Amelia Martinez
Mrs. Aderholdt
8th Grade Language Arts
18 April 2023
Powerful Women in Science How did Katherine Johnson and the other women who worked with her at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) impact the Space Race? During the time of the Space Race, women were hired within the scientific field as computers. The “computers” were hired to calculate the complex equations that space travel and research entailed. Katherine Johnson and her female coworkers were especially impactful in the race to space and the important representation of females in the scientific field. These intelligent women were a leading cause for our success in space exploration. Katherine Johnson was an impressive black female mathematician.

In 1942, Mary W. Jackson graduated from the Hampton Institute with a dual-degree in Math and Physical Sciences. Similar to Johnson, Jackson taught in an all-black school before her time working for NACA/NASA. She would change occupations three more times before finally working in the computing section of NASA’s Langley Laboratory. After working two years in the computing department, she was offered a position working with engineers in the “Supersonic Pressure Tunnel, a 60,000 horsepower wind tunnel capable of blasting models with winds approaching twice the speed of sound” (Shetterly, Mary W. Jackson Biography). Here, she was given hands-on experience with conducting experiments and her mentor Kazimierz Czarnecki suggested that she “enter a training program that would allow her to earn a promotion from mathematician to engineer” (Shetterly, Mary W. Jackson Biography). She took this advice and was required to take graduate-level math and physics courses after work. Jackson needed to get special permission to be in the classroom with her white peers because Hampton High School was still very segregated. Jackson was said to be “Never one to flinch in the face of a challenge” (Shetterly, Mary W. Jackson Biography). She powered through her courses and gained her promotion to an engineer. In 1958, she became NASA’s very first black female engineer. Female engineers from any background were

As head of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) segregated West Area Computing Unit, she gained the title of NASA’s first African-American manager. Vaughan came to the Langley Laboratory in 1943. She was assigned to the West Area Computing unit. This unit was an all-black computing unit filled with colored female mathematicians. These women were “originally required to use separate dining and bathroom facilities” (Dorothy Vaughan Biography) due to the Jim Crow laws which required “work separately from their white female counterparts” (Dorothy Vaughan Biography). Originally, the unit’s first leaders were white. Later, Dorothea was promoted to “NACA's first black supervisor” (Dorothy Vaughan Biography). She stayed at the head of the West Area Computing unit for 10 years until it was abolished along with segregation within the departments when NACA became NASA. Her work as a trailblazer in the fight against black stereotypes within the workplace at the time were truly the first step in letting her legacy live on within the careers of people such as Mary Jackson and Katherine