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The postwar years would also see a new wave of black women coming to Langley, following in the footsteps of pioneers like Dorothy Vaughan who had done so much to open the doors of opportunity to the next generation. But all the women, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson each continued to face challenges. In 1951, a new 26-year-old ...

By the mid-1950s, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that housed Langley, was beginning to introduce mechanical computers into its laboratory spaces. Companies like Bell Telephone Laboratories and IBM were supplying the government with the first generation of mechanical data-processing machines. The female mathematic...

On October 5, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the Sputnik satellite into orbit, inaugurating the space race and sparking a major panic among both American policymakers and the general public. All across the US, people with shortwave radios tuned in to hear the tiny satellite’s telltale “beep beep” and organized observation parties to w...

The team of engineers with whom Katherine worked was tasked with mapping the exact trajectory of the manned spacecraft, from the second it lifted off the launchpad to the instant it splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. Katherine had to process the numbers generated by the proposed trajectories, over and over, re-calculating the figures every time a...

Pioneering black female engineers and mathematicians like Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson left an indelible mark on NASA, the struggle for African-American civil rights, and the United States itself. When, on July 20, 1969, the men of the Apollo 11 mission finally walked on the surface of the Moon, it was the fulfillment of the...