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Read all about how a young Black girl who loved numbers grew into a brilliant mathematician who helped land the first person on the moon in this inspiring addition to the Who Was? series. Read all about how a young Black girl who loved numbers grew into a brilliant mathematician who helped land the first person on the moon in this inspiring addition to the Who Was? series. From a very young age, Katherine Johnson counted everything-the number of dirty dishes she'd washed, the steps she walked to church, and even the number of leaves on the trees. By 1928, she was so intelligent and skilled at math that she was able to skip several grades and start high school at age ten! And while Katherine had to deal with racism, segregation, and prejudice throughout her life, she did not let this hold her back from becoming a mathematician. In 1953, she started working as a "human computer" at America's space agency, now known as NASA. Katherine calculated complex equations by h