Activity overview

Run the activity

1.Begin to discuss the question Who Is..? by introducing Katherine Johnson as a scientist and asking children what they think she did. Working in a small group or pair, can they look for clues about her in the photographs. These prompts may help you:

• Do you think she does her work now or did she live and work in the past?
• Is there anything in the photographs which gives you a clue about the type of science she was involved in?
• Katherine Johnson's mathematical abilities helped astronauts travel into space. Would you trust a person or a computer more to make these calculations?

2. Share your ideas with the class. Did everyone agree?

3. Read the Background Science (you could do this as a class) to find out more about her life.

Background science

This is Katherine Johnson, an African American mathematician and space scientist who was born in West Virginia, USA in 1918. She worked for an agency which later became NASA. She manually performed complex mathematical calculations (as shown in the photographs) because in those days there were no calculators and computers were only just being invented. Everything had to be calculated by people.

Katherine Johnson’s talent for maths was essential to the success of the early US space programme. The astronauts trusted Katherine more than the computers and asked her to verify the calculations for their trailblazing missions by hand. She calculated the trajectory (flight plan) which allowed Alan Shepard to be the first American to escape the Earth's gravity and travel into space. Without her vital work, it is uncertain whether Neil Armstrong would have been the first human to walk on the Moon. She was instrumental in the Apollo 11 Moon landing and the rescue mission of the Apollo 13 astronauts. What’s more, her calculations are still used today.

In 2015, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom which is the highest US civilian honour. This recognised her as a pioneering role model for black women who want to go into science and engineering. Katherine Johnson’s inspiring story reminds us that anything is possible for girls. To honour her contributions to space science, NASA named a research facility after her in 2016. Katherine died, aged 101 years old, in 2020.

Take it further

Watch

Find out more about Katherine Johnson with this short BBC video. Watch this film to hear Katherine reflecting on her life and work. This is a clip from the film Hidden Figures showing Katherine Johnson, played by an actress, calculating the flight path of the spacecraft. Alternatively, watch this film from NASA on the current Artemis mission which aims to land the first woman and person of colour on the Moon. Through the mission, scientists hope to learn more about how humans can live in space.

Activities

Read this biography to find out more about Katherine Johnson's life.

Working with a partner, can children write an answer to the question, Who is Katherine Johnson? An extra challenge could be to use less than 25 words (and more than 10).

Alternatively, children could explain how Katherine Johnson's work makes them feel about maths.

To explore some of NASA’s female STEM stars visit this page. What STEM career would you choose to do and why?

Find out about other diverse scientists, in science-related jobs, using A Scientist Just Like Me resource.

Cross-Curricular Activities

Children could write a letter applying to be one of the astronauts that will travel to the Moon on Artemis or write a diary imagining they were one of the astronauts just landing on the moon.

Read the book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. Children could debate some of the issues in the book and learn about the other black women working at NASA at that time.

Linked Explorify activities - our recommendations: 

You could listen to this space launch with Prepare to Launch or build your own Rocket launcher.

If you would like to find out about Maggie Aderin-Pocock, another space scientist, try these activities: Space engineer and Who is Maggie Aderin-Pocock?