Talk:Katherine Johnson

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1. Awards Section: (add to "Legacy and honors") During her career at NASA, Johnson received the Lunar Orbiter Award and three NASA Special Achievement Awards. The National Technical Association named her Mathematician of the Year in 1997. She also received honorary doctorates from SUNY Farmingdale, Capitol College in Maryland, Old Dominion University in Virginia, and West Virginia University.

NASA. (2024, March 18). Katherine Johnson: A lifetime of STEM. https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/katherine-johnson-a-lifetime-of-stem/

2. First Published Report (add to NASA career section, after the paragraph about her name on reports) The report was titled Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, coauthored with engineer Ted Skopinski. It marked the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as a named author on a research report.

Biography.com Editors. (2021, January 11). Katherine Johnson. A&E Networks Television. https://www.biography.com/scientists/katherine-g-johnson

3. Misinformation in the Career Section (replace the existing sentence in the career section) Current text: "During the Moon landing, Johnson was at a meeting in the Pocono Mountains. She and a few others crowded around a small television screen watching the first steps on the Moon."

Replace with: During the Moon landing, Johnson was attending an Alpha Kappa Alpha leadership retreat in the Pocono Mountains, where she watched the first steps on the Moon with her sorority sisters; confident in her calculations, but still anxious about potential failures.

The KCGJ Foundation. (2023). Katherine Johnson's work at NASA and professional accomplishments. https://www.katherinejohnsonfoundation.org/her-work/

Shetterly, M. L. (2024, June 28). Katherine Johnson biography. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/katherine-johnson-biography/ Jacksonlamoureux (talk) 18:53, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Not done: your request appears to have been generated by a large language model. Day Creature (talk) 14:00, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

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Hello! i hope this message finds Wikipedia well. i was wondering if changing Katherine Johnson from "American Human Computer" to "NASA Mathematician & spaceflight pioneer". her roll was way more important to Nasa and space flight than to just be known as a Human Computer, because human computer gives more of a look at what she was there to work for rather than the impact her smarts actually made to NASA and space flight:). ~2026-22963-50 (talk) 17:53, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before posting an edit request. Day Creature (talk) 21:05, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-22963-50 I started a separate comment to establish a consensus, so please respond there if you want to say something more about this. Mathematician seems well established in reliable sources. If you have sources for "spaceflight pioneer" can you tell us what they are? Lijil (talk) 22:01, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Please help us establish consensus that Johnson should be described as a mathematician, as she was when this article was approved as a GA in 2020. This should be quite uncontroversial, as there are many reliable sources for this, including Science,, the BBC, NASA, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, The Encyclopedia Britannica, etc, and this article until @Historyexpert2 replaced mathematician with "employee" in the short description and "computer" in the main text, using the edit summary: "Some minor fixes for style. Remove redirected article from See Also" which does not seem to describe the actual changes. When Cite and Write (talk · contribs) put "mathematician" back, with a note on HistoryExpert2's talk page, HistoryExpert2 undid it and when Citeandwrite replaced it again with sources, HistoryExpert2 removed it again citing WP:ONUS and referencing the talk page (diff). There was no talk page discussion, so I am starting it here to establish consensus.

I also posted a note on @Historyexpert2's talk page at User talk:Historyexpert2#Please stop using dishonest edit summaries () Lijil (talk) 21:22, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Support describing Johnson as a "mathematician and human computer" as that is how she is described in reliable sources. Day Creature (talk) 21:45, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Comment: Note that the same removal of "mathematician" has happened at Johnson's colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson's articles as well, and I reverted those. (see Talk:Dorothy Vaughan#Mathematician and Talk:Mary Jackson (engineer)#Mathematician. Lijil (talk) 21:58, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Support description as "mathematician"--should be required. "Human computer" is optional. DonFB (talk) 22:07, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

As no one has objected here, I have restored the description of Johnson as a mathematician. Day Creature (talk) 21:27, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you!! Lijil (talk) 10:58, 18 April 2026 (UTC)