Katherine Johnson

And so he was probably the country's first data scientist, when you think about it.

Or another person is Katherine Johnson.

When I learned about her, I was just, like, blown away.

Mm-hmm.

And some of the people who helped make America's space program possible were not nearly as famous at the time as the astronauts.

Today, many people know the story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vulcan, and Mary Jackson because of the book and movie Hidden Figures.

I love that movie.

They were Black women who worked at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.

So while America was trying to figure out how to read space, it was also still arguing whether black kids should be allowed to attend the same school as white kids.

And those barriers existed inside the scientific world, too.

Katherine Johnson began working at Langley in 1953, when racial segregation was still the law in Virginia.

Black female mathematicians at Langley worked in a segregated group called the West Area Computing Unit.

So we want these women.

And Katherine Johnson, who's obviously one of the main characters in Hidden Figures, she was asked, she was requested to be on that team of people and to actually make it into head office and ended up having this really incredible career at NASA, is the reason, honestly, Apollo 11 happened successfully.

And That jump from having, you know, women being computers, before computers existed, computer was a job and it was predominantly women, to, you know, now we're in the 21st century and it is just a completely male-dominated field.

Women such as the women that are featured in the film Hidden Figures have always been there, why don't you think the godmothers are as visible as the godfathers to the average person on the street who doesn't work in technology?

You know, I think there's very few people today that could do that.

You know, it's incredible.

Who is your favorite godmother? Katherine Johnson has always been a massive inspiration to me.

It actually wasn't until I got a bit older and I started learning about, you know, the struggles of being a black woman in America that I was like, wow, OK, I loved you before, but now this is just insane.

So even though it's central to the scientific achievement, it kind of gets relegated to being only on the margins.

And I'm thinking of what you described about Katherine Johnson's work about helping to put people into space or Anne McLaren helping to make IVF possible.

Crucial scientific work gets sidelined or marginalised.

Yeah, it happens a lot.

okay

and so he was probably the country's first data scientist when you think about it Or another person is Katherine Johnson.

When I learned about her, I was just like blown away.

You know,

So you get to fill in the role of the one person that's not here.

And that's Catherine Johnson this morning.

So Catherine Johnson is not here today, but Grace Keating should be arriving right around seven o'clock.

We have Representative Max Reimer.

He should be joining us in studio around 630 and somewhere around all of that time.

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space? B.

Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer? C, Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space, or D, Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician who helped send astronauts to space? All right, tenors, did you guess it? The answer and the telescope's full name is B, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Roman was NASA's first chief astronomer, and this new space telescope will capture incredible views of the universe and even help scientists explore some of its biggest mysteries, from planets beyond our solar system to studying dark matter and dark energy and even more.

I can't wait to see what cosmic mysteries unfold during this school year.

There's so many.

There's, you know, David Blackwell, J. Ernest Wilkins, Catherine Johnson, you know, the sisters that, you know, were featured in the Hidden Figures movie that worked for NASA.

There's so many.

I'm actually going to be doing a series on black mathematicians where I'm going to be doing a lot of like research on black mathematicians and using social media, trying to use social media for something positive because there's so much nonsense on social media.

And according to the IMDb blurb, three female African-American mathematicians play a pivotal role in astronaut John Glenn's launch into orbit while dealing with racial and gender discrimination.

This stars Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughn, and Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson.

Three trailblazers, I guess, in mathematics and also the history of NASA.

I'm going to go around the table and

It just seemed really awkward.

But resident and biggest fair fan, Katherine Johnson, said that that was not a typical phrase.

Like, I don't think she had even heard of that before.

Had you ever heard that before? Love me like I love the fair.

Coming up, RNC committeeman A.K. Kamara.

He should be in studio right around 7 o'clock.

Also, Katherine Johnson and Grace Keating.

We expect them to arrive also right around 7 o'clock.