Olek Krupa

Even from a young age, Katherine Johnson's family and teachers knew she was made for great things. Even as a child, her mind was something special. She was gifted with an ability to work out complicated math sums far superior to anything a young child ought to be able to do.

There were a number of factors standing between Katherine and her education - most spanning from the fact that she was black and it was the 1920's. The country of Virginia where she and her family lived would not supply an education over a eighth grade to anyone of Afro-American ancestry and few family worked impossibly hard, splitting their time over two counties, to make sure their little girl could become the success they knew she would be. Their hard work paid off and Katherine became a math teacher before being poached by a new and exciting agency looking to recruit some of the most talented mathematicians of the time.

Katherine, along with two fellow mathematicians, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, were introduced into a whole new use for maths. The ladies who worked in the department were human computers and they unravelled huge flight calculations and soon Katherine was once again headed up the ladder to work on a space mission - a mission to send a man to the moon and safely return back to earth.

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