On March 23, 2024, Women in Aviation International (WAI) inducted the brilliant mathematician and NASA Legend Katherine Johnson (posthumously) into their International Pioneer Hall of Fame Class of 2024 in Orlando, Florida. Other inductees included the first female class of U.S. Air Force Undergraduate Navigators, and the U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Flight Nurses. The induction ceremony occurred during WAI’s 35th Annual Women in Aviation International Conference. According to WAI, this was one of its largest and most successful annual gatherings attracting more than 5,200 attendees, including 142 international representatives from 35 countries. WAI was established in 1992 to honor women who have made significant contributions as record-setters, pioneers, or innovators. With over 18,000 members across 120 countries, WAI is the largest organization in the world dedicated to increasing the number of women working in all areas of aviation and aerospace. Katherine Johnson, known as the Woman of the 20th Century, has taken her well-deserved place among the WAI International Pioneer Hall of Fame honorees!
As a nation, we must continue to remember and honor Katherine Johnson (8/26/1918 – 2/24/2020) by keeping her at the forefront of our nation’s history. Katherine Johnson’s tenure at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and now NASA, was during the decades of the 1950s and 1960s when our nation, and indeed the world, were caught up in an exceedingly dangerous Space Race during the Cold War with the then #1 World Power, the Soviet Union (now Russia). It was a time when the Soviet’s Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, threatened to “bury” America. A time when the threat of nuclear annihilation through an Atomic War was very real! Those of us who lived through that time remember the U.S. civil defense response of vivid “duck and cover” drills under desks in schools, the warning sirens that rang out at any time during Air- Raid Drills to seek cover in “fallout shelters” that were built underground throughout the country in the event of a nuclear attack. The success of America’s space program was vital to secure America’s ultimate victory in the Space Race with the Soviet Union and perhaps avoiding World War III.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical genius was crucial in helping the United States win that Space Race. At NACA/NASA, Johnson’s unprecedented mathematical calculations of orbital mechanics, calculating trajectories, were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S.-crewed space flights: from America’s first man in space Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission in 1961; to John Glenn’s three earth orbits in 1962; to the calculation of the trajectory for the historic first successful crewed 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Landing and subsequent Apollo missions; to the Space Shuttle program; and to the Earth Resources Satellite.
