Katherine G. Johnson was born on August 26, 1918 in West Virginia. A gifted child who was especially adept at math, she made the most of her education and finished eighth grade by age 10.
After graduating summa cum laude from what is now West Virginia State University with degrees in Math and French, Johnson learned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring African-American women to serve as "computers" as NACA and the rest of the defense industry had been forced to hire African Americans by executive order during World War II.
At the time, computers were mostly women checked the calculations of engineers. Johnson applied, and the following year she was accepted for a position at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
Aerial View of the Langley Research Center. From Human Computers: The Women in Aeronautical Research.
Johnson not only proved adept at her calculations, she displayed a curiosity and assertiveness, landing her a transfer from the African-American computing pool to Langley's flight research division, where she talked her way into meetings and earned additional responsibilities (after only two weeks) such as determining how to get a human into space and back. As a result, the task of plotting the path for Alan Shepard's 1961 journey to space, the first in American history, fell on her shoulders.