Katherine Johnson: NASA's Pioneering Female Physicist (thenewstack.io)

destinyland writes: Tuesday's State of the Union address included a shout-out to Katherine Johnson, the pioneering African American mathematician and physicist who calculated the trajectory of Alan Shepherd's 1961 space trip. "Her reputation was so strong that John Glenn asked her to recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth," notes one technology reporter. NASA policy at the time was to not acknowledge the female contributors to scientific papers, though "She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science," according to one NASA official, noting that her impact literally reaches all the way to the moon. At a ceremony in November, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the 97-year-old pioneer continues to encourage young people to also pursue careers in technology, science, engineering and math.

Comments

"Policy not to acknowledge" quote is offensive

[l2718]

The article says "The practice in 1960 would have been not to list the female Computers as formal co-authors". The blurb above replaces "Computers" with "contributors", painting a false and offensive picture.

Today in many fields it is common to only include as authors of a paper those who have had creative scientific input. A common example is research assistants who collate data, or technical staff who build lab equipment, but the example of someone who did a numerical computation for the author is not uncommon. Most "computers" simply did the computations, which was certainly an important contribution to the research, but not necessarily the kind of contribution that makes one an author of a paper.

Re:"Policy not to acknowledge" quote is offensive

[l2718]

What about male computers?

Because the computers were all female. There was rampant sexism at the time – in particular in that women could be computers but not research staff (with Ms. Johnson an apparent exception). But there are better ways of highlighting this sexism (of which Ms. Johnson was a victim) than by unreasonably rewriting quotes from the article

Longevity pays off

[rmdingler]

Katherine Johnson seems like a genuine candidate for long overdue recognition.

Good thing she lived to 97!

Not an abberation

[Theovon]

If only we as a society can now stop thinking of these people as abberations just on the basis of gender and other genetic factors. Geniuses in general are rare, so if you’re looking for them, the last thing you want to do is summarily exclude any segment of any population, simply because YOU believe some of their characteristics correlate less with genius.

I was reading a journal paper from the 1970’s or something that presented average IQs for different genetic groups. They found the average Asian IQ to be higher tna the average Caucasian IQ, which was higher than the average African IQ. However, in every case, the standard deviation was very high. This guarantees that geniuses would be found in large populations. (Of course, none of this accounts for aspects of intelligence not considered by IQ, like social ability.)

Of course, racism isn’t really about IQ. IQ is sometimes used as an *excuse* for racism, but if that were not a factor, racists would find another excuse. Bigotry in general is about deciding that someone is incompetent or inferior on the basis of superficial traits. It becomes *criminal* when you actively interfere with someone’s life on the basis of a prejudgement like this.

I’m hoping that highlighting women and other marginalized groups and their contributions to science and society as a whole will gradually enlighten the human race.

Disagree

[Chrisq]

Certainly some of the claims of unfair treatment of women is dubious, especially the "I'm not included socially" or "they act too friendly and familiar" sort. However this is genuinely shocking:

NASA policy at the time was to not acknowledge the female contributors to scientific papers, though "She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science,"

We should acknowledge it as such and not put it down to some SWJ agenda

Re:Disagree

[gstoddart]

No kidding, from the Gutenberg link:

"...in June 1953, Katherine was contracted as a research mathematician at the Langley Research Center... At first she worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual `[computers] who wore [skirts].' Their main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine's knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that,'they forgot to return me to the pool.' While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine says she ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before.) She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged."

This isn't some flunky doing the boring calculations beneath the principal researchers ... this is someone actively contributing to the outcomes, but who got ignored when it came time for credit.

She plotted backup navigational charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures. In 1962, when NASA used computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, officials called on her to verify the computer's numbers. Ms. Johnson later worked directly with real computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped to establish confidence in the new technology. She calculated the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. Later in her career, she worked on the Space Shuttle program, the Earth Resources Satellite, and on plans for a mission to Mars.

This is a woman who deserves a ton of credit for actually being a significant part of history at NASA. She sure as hell wasn't just sitting around adding up a few thing here and there.

Re:Disagree

[_Sharp'r_]

She co-authored 26 papers and was listed as an author in a NASA peer-reviewed report. I know the summary makes it sound like she didn't get any credit for her work at the time, but actually following and reading the gutenberg link provided makes the point she was more knowledgeable than the rest because she was credited when normally someone who was just a "computer" wouldn't have been, implying she was more than just another "computer".

The whole "NASA policy" part of the summary is clearly wrong with regards to female "contributors", as she was both female and listed as a co-author in a NASA paper in 1960. It's a confused mishmash of "computers" not being credited, trying to imply that was because they were predominantly female at the time, which simply isn't true. Seen any papers lately where a TI-30Xa is listed as a coauthor? Yeah, me neither.

Re:We now get Monday "White Male Guilt" articles?

[Theovon]

In 100 years, you’ll be right.

We still live in a society that needs to be *reminded* that race and gender are socially worthless predictors of one’s abilities. In the 1960’s, people could be openly bigoted and sexist. Today, they’ve all just moved into the closet. Moreover, there are some bigoted and sexist ideas that are so deeply embedded in our culture that people aren’t even aware of it. Personally, when I was in the 7th grade and was bussed to a school in the middle of the ghetto, I developed a very negative impression of black people. I have to remind myself that if I’d gone to the 7th grade in a school that was in the middle of a trailor park, that I would have an equally bad impression of white people. Technically, people should be free to harbor bigoted thoughts, but as a society, we have to make it clear that *acting* on those feelings is as criminal as discrimination on the basis of *any* superficial characteristic.

Literally

[110010001000]

"She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science," Someone doesn't know what literally means.

Re:Literally

[silentcoder]

That would be you.
According to the dictionary the word "literally" has two meanings - and you only know the first one.

Webster's dictionary and the OED both include the second one - which is correct here. Even dictionary.com lists it as option 4 - with a note that this can be confusing since this meaning is very nearly the opposite of the first meaning, but this meaning has been common throughout the English speaking world since at least the early 19th century.
In dictionary.com it is listed as:
"in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually:"

Webster's lists the second meaning as:
" in effect : virtually will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice"
And gives the note that this is not actually an opposite of meaning one, nor is it a misuse - it's a perfectly valid use of the word for hyperbole or emphasis.

I'd have added the OED as well but their website is unusable and I haven't got the patience to copy and paste dead-treeware.

Either way - the point is made, if you think there is something wrong with how "literally" was used in that sentence, then it is literally you who don't know what "literally" means.

Re:Literally

[Orgasmatron]

Dictionaries memorialize common usage as an aid to readers. They offer no opinion on the correctness of word choices.

The inverse meaning of literally is common, but incorrect. Note that I am not normally in the prescriptive camp of linguistics. I do not consider formations that merely make one sound like an idiot to be incorrect, but I do consider formations that lose information to be incorrect.

Consider the present case. "wrote the book" is an expression that can mean either "wrote the book" or "knows enough that he could write a book". The use of the word "literally" could help distinguish the two cases here, but is instead used as an intensifier. Considering that the cliche in question is already quite superlative, adding an intensifier seems inflationary, and it actually diminishes her stature in the minds of the reader, as he will inevitably be disappointed when he finds out that the claim isn't true.*

Granted, the author of this is directly quoting someone, but should have chosen a different quote.

On a side note, I'm a bit surprised by the comments here. Was the slashdot readership not generally aware that large scale batch computation in the age before electronic computers was done by hordes of people (mostly women) called "computers"? It came up a couple of times in Cryptonomicon.

And what is with the sudden push to present the sexism of the recent past in comic book terms? (See Agent Carter, or Aquarius for examples of mustache-twirling melodrama-villain sexism. Mad Men has a bit too, but the other shows really turned it up to 11.) My theory is that actual sexism has become such a foreign concept in the modern west that writers today don't understand it at all, so they have to resort to caricature.

* I can't find a book by her, and nothing I've seen claims that she made significant contributions to any specific actual book. Anyone have a citation?

The oldest modern (=mentions using radar) textbook on the subject that I'm aware of is Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, published in 1971, and based on unstructured materials (including plenty of NASA papers) that the Air Force Academy had been collecting and using since around 1959.

Re:Literally

[TheCurvyPoet]

She authored the textbooks that were used in universities across the country. These books were written as they went, because the things in the textbooks had never been done before. She wrote them. As in, put pen to paper and wrote the books used in classrooms. Thus, she literally wrote the textbooks on rocket science. And the quote in the article is from the Deputy Director of NASA, who, methinks, understands the definition better than yourself.

Its appalling! Can we correct it?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

NASA officially had a policy not to list female contributors to papers as co-authors? Wow! That was simply awful. How did they even justify such an unscientific discriminatory policy? Were there any male scientists who objected to it? Did any female scientist raise objections? Is it possible to dig through old NASA records to find such contributions?

BTW it should be possible to find it in the archives. NASA records and documents everything. Richard Feynman suggested something trivial. He noticed they were marking the bolts at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock positions to help align solid booster rocket section assembly. He suggesting marking the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock bolts in addition to help them better. NASA studied the suggestion for two years and rejected it because the documentation update would be prohibitive. That is the level of documentation they maintain. I am sure it would be possible to find the long forgotten women contributors and right the wrong.

We award Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously after several decades. We restored Robert E Lee's citizenship decades after he died. Gen Lee's application for citizenship with formal sworn renunciation of his allegiance to Confederacy was taken home as a personal souvenir by the Secretary of State and was found in attic after several decades.

If restoring that traitor's citizenship status after a century is deemed to be important, giving credit to women scientists for their contribution to NASA is important too. We can and we should find the historical wrong and right it.

Re:Its appalling! Can we correct it?

[_Sharp'r_]

NASA officially had a policy not to list female contributors to papers as co-authors?

Nope. In fact, if you read the gutenberg link in the summary, it clearly states that she was listed as a co-author. i.e.:

NASA TND-233, “The Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite over a Selected Earth Position” 1960. Authors: T.H. Skopinski, Katherine G. Johnson

The link says her contributions were greater than the mere "computers" and proves it by stating she co-authored 26 papers, so while there may have been a policy not to list the people who did the underlying math for you (Seen a TI-30Xa listed as a co-author recently?), they clearly listed female contributors.

Trying to get the facts on something through the media is like playing a game of deliberately biased "telephone", however.

Re:We now get Monday "White Male Guilt" articles?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a large amount of anti-male sexism going on today, you are correct about that.

I share your optimism that in 100 years, we won't have to worry about a misandrist society that leads to the conditions where 93% of work fatalities are men, 80% of suicides are men, 77% of homicide victims are men.

Re:Africans are not less smart

[PopeRatzo]

What is more ironically amusing is that people who use irrelevant statistics to determine something as personal as individual traits such as intelligence are ironically showing a bit of stupidity themselves.

It's something that a particular set of racists do whenever they are faced with a brilliant person of a different race. The only way they can make themselves feel better under those circumstances is to point to some discredited "scientific study" that demonstrates their intellectual superiority as a group..