Katherine Goble grew up in White Sulphur, West Virginia. She and her family were very poor. Katherine was a black woman, therefore; she had to go to an all black school because she grew up in the 1960’s. She was practically a math genius, and she could handle any math problem by hand. By the age of thirteen, she was attending the high school on the campus of West Virginia State College. At the age of eighteen, she enrolled at the college.
Once graduating college, she got a job at NASA. There, she was put into a basement with many other black women to compute numbers. She and her two friends Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughn had always wanted to be either in the field of mathematics or engineering. Along with working at NASA, Katherine also has 3 children at home and her husband passed away. Her first encounter with Mrs. Mitchell, Dorothy was there and she actually was chosen to be one of the workers in the main office of NASA because of her math skills. A big part of her life comes in the main office where she has to deal with the people and the racism of this time period. She was the only woman, let alone black woman to step into the room to work along with the men. Katherine becomes stronger and …show more content…
As Katherine would work on the math in the office, they would hold meetings and discuss the situation of getting John Glen to space. During these meetings, they would change up almost everything and when Katherine went to turn in her work, it wasn't how they wanted it. This occurred several times a day and Katherine wanted to take position in these meetings. She talked to Paul about them and he stated that the meetings were only for certain people and no women had attended these. Eventually, after talking to her boss Mr. Harrison, she was allowed to attend these meetings. This helped her in a major way because all of her work could be correct the first time and she wouldn't have to worry about