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Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Civics, Civil Rights, Computer Science, Diversity in Science, Mathematics, Physics, Women in Science
Evelyn Granville (born May 1, 1924, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died June 27, 2023, Silver Spring, Maryland) was an American mathematician who was one of the first African American women to receive a doctoral degree in mathematics.
Boyd received an undergraduate degree in mathematics and physics from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1945. She received a doctoral degree in mathematics in 1949 from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied under Einar Hille. She was the second African American woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics. From 1949 to 1950 she had a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University, and from 1950 to 1952 she was an associate professor of mathematics at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.
In 1952 Boyd became a mathematician at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in Washington, D.C., where she worked on missile fuses. Her division of NBS was later absorbed by the United States Army and became the Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories. There she became interested in the new field of computerprogramming, which led her to the corporation International Business Machines (IBM) in 1956. She worked on programs in the assembly language SOAP and later in FORTRAN for the IBM 650, which was the first computer intended for use in businesses, and the IBM 704. In 1957 she joined IBM’s Vanguard Computing Center in Washington, D.C., where she wrote computer programs that tracked orbits for the uncrewed Vanguard satellite and the crewed Mercury spacecraft. She left IBM in 1960 to move to Los Angeles, where she worked at the aerospace firm Space Technology Laboratories; there she did further work on satellite orbits. In 1962 she joined the aerospace firm North American Aviation, where she worked on celestial mechanics and trajectory calculations for the Apollo project. She returned to IBM to its Federal Systems Division in 1963 as a senior mathematician.
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Civil Rights, Diversity in Science, Education, NASA, Space Exploration, STEM, Women in Science
The Honorable Aprille J. Ericsson was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology (S&T). In this role, she directed an organization responsible for the oversight, advocacy, and policy for the Department of Defense (DoD) S&T enterprise, including S&T workforce and laboratory infrastructure, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, and University-Affiliated Research Centers. The ASD(S&T) office oversees a broad portfolio of S&T programs, including basic research, Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR), DoD Manufacturing Technology, and nine Manufacturing Innovation Institutes. Focused emerging technology areas include: advanced materials, biotechnology, quantum science, and FutureG, along with developing system capabilities for hypersonics, PNT, nuclear delivery, and human and unmanned platforms. Additionally, the ASD(S&T) office encourages inclusion, diversity, and equity through focused outreach and interaction with Historically Black Colleges & Universities, Minority Institutions, community colleges, and K-12 programs. Furthermore, the ASD(S&T) office is responsible for technology and program intellectual property protection.
Before joining the DoD, Dr. Ericsson worked in various positions for 30+ years at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Her last NASA role was the New Business Lead for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Instrument Systems and Technology Division. In this role, she fostered technical federal partnerships that enabled industry, small businesses, and academia collaborate for competitive opportunities to solve strategic R&D, technological, and space science challenges. Dr. Ericsson also served as the NASA GSFC program manager for SBIR/STTR within the Innovative Technology and Partnerships Office. Her additional roles at NASA include: GSFC Deputy to the Chief Technologist for the Engineering and Technology Directorate; HQs Program Executive for Earth Science; HQs Business Executive for Space Science, and GSFC Instrument Project Manager for missions that include the James Webb Space Telescope and ICESat-2. Her engineering roles include design, analysis, and build of attitude control systems, instruments, and robotics.
Dr. Ericsson is a champion for STEM education and the future workforce. Throughout her career, she has sat on many academic boards for the National Academies, universities, and K-12 institutions, mentored many NASA interns and students, been a college professor, and led the advisor for a National Society Black Engineers Jr. Chapter.
Dr. Ericsson received her Bachelor of Science in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received a masters and doctorate in mechanical engineering, aerospace option from Howard University. Dr. Ericsson has obtained leadership and management certificates from Radcliffe University and John Hopkins University.
Dr. Philip Emeagwali, who has been called the “Bill Gates of Africa,” was born in Nigeria in 1954. Like many African schoolchildren, he dropped out of school at age 14 because his father could not continue paying his school fees. However, his father continued teaching him at home, and every day, Emeagwali performed mental exercises such as solving 100 math problems in one hour. His father taught him until Philip “knew more than he did.”
Growing up in a country torn by civil war, Emeagwali lived in a building crumbled by rocket shells. He believed his intellect was a way out of the line of fire, so he studied hard and eventually received a scholarship to Oregon State University when he was 17, where he obtained a BS in mathematics. He also earned three other degrees—a Ph.D. in scientific computing from the University of Michigan and two Master’s degrees from George Washington University.
The noted black inventor received acclaim based, at least in part, on his study of nature, specifically bees. Emeagwali saw an inherent efficiency in the way bees construct and work with honeycombs and determined computers that emulate this process could be the most efficient and powerful. In 1989, emulating the bees’ honeycomb construction, Emeagwali used 65,000 processors to invent the world’s fastest computer, which performs computations at 3.1 billion calculations per second.
Dr. Philip Emeagwali’s resume is loaded with many other such feats, including ways of making oil fields more productive – which has resulted in the United States saving hundreds of millions of dollars each year. As one of the most famous African-American inventors of the 20th century, Dr. Emeagwali also won the Gordon Bell Prize – the Nobel Prize for computation. His computers are currently being used to forecast the weather and to predict the likelihood and effects of future global warming.
Topics: African Americans, Biology, Black History Month, Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Diversity in Science, Medicine
“Father of the Blood Bank” June 3, 1904 – April 1, 1950 Renowned surgeon and pioneer in the preservation of life-saving blood plasma Major scientific achievements:
Discovered method for long-term storage of blood plasma
Organized America’s first large-scale blood bank
Dr. Charles Richard Drew broke barriers in a racially divided America to become one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. His pioneering research and systematic developments in the use and preservation of blood plasma during World War II not only saved thousands of lives but innovated the nation’s blood banking process and standardized procedures for long-term blood preservation and storage techniques adapted by the American Red Cross.
A native Washingtonian, Drew was an average student but gifted athlete recruited in 1922 on a football and track and field scholarship by Amherst College in Massachusetts. He was one of only 13 African Americans in a student body of 600, where the racial climate exposed him to hostility from opposing teams. His own football team passed him over as captain his senior year even though he was the team’s best athlete.
Beyond sports, Drew didn’t have a clear direction until a biology professor piqued his interest in medicine. Like many other fields, medicine was largely segregated, greatly limiting education and career options for African Americans. For Drew, the narrowed road would lead him to McGill University College of Medicine in Montréal. There, he distinguished himself, winning the annual scholarship prize in neuroanatomy; becoming elected to the medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha; and staffing the McGill Medical Journal. He also won the J. Francis Williams Prize in medicine after beating the top 5 students in an exam competition. In 1933, Drew received his MD and CM (Master of Surgery) degrees, graduating second in a class of 137.
Drew’s interest in transfusion medicine began during his internship and surgical residency at Montreal Hospital (1933-1935) working with bacteriology professor John Beattie on ways to treat shock with fluid replacement. Drew aspired to continue training in transfusion therapy at the Mayo Clinic, but racial prejudices at major American medical centers barred black scholars from their practices. He would instead join the faculty at Howard University College of Medicine, starting as a pathology instructor, and then progressing to surgical instructor and chief surgical resident at Freedmen’s Hospital.
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Chemistry, Civil Rights, Diversity in Science, Education, Women in Science
Overcoming the dual hurdles of racial and gender bias, Marie Maynard Daly (1921–2003) conducted influential studies on proteins, sugars, and cholesterol. In 1947 she became the first Black woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in the United States. In addition to her research, she was committed to developing programs to increase the participation of minority students in medical schools and graduate science programs. Daly’s biography helps us understand how individual curiosity, social support, historical circumstances, and professional dedication can foster social and scientific breakthroughs.
Daly was born in Queens, New York, on April 16, 1921. Her mother, Helen Page, encouraged her children’s academic interests early on, reading at length to Daly and her younger twin brothers. Daly was fascinated, in particular, by Paul De Kruif’s popular 1926 book, Microbe Hunters, a collection of “high adventure” stories about scientists who discovered a “new world under the microscope.”
She was also inspired by her father, Ivan C. Daly, who loved science. Though he had received a scholarship to study chemistry at Cornell University, he could not afford to finish the program.
Daly went to Hunter College High School, an all-women’s institution that selectively admitted students based on merit alone. Here, women teachers were positive role models: they supported and encouraged her ambition to become a chemist. After her brothers enlisted to fight in World War II, she enrolled at Queens College in Flushing, New York, which opened in 1937 and was free of charge to students from the community.
Like other schools, Queens College was adjusting to wartime conditions: roughly 1,200 students from the college enlisted in the U.S. military during World War II, which created new openings for women and minorities. Daly graduated in 1942 with numerous honors and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.
World War II motivated U.S. governmental interest in science and technology, which was crucial to the war effort and revitalized the national economy. It also spurred new workforce initiatives that opened doors for women chemists like Daly. But women and minority scientists were often seen as “reservists” who were merely expected to provide temporary and relatively low-ranking support. Daly’s 1942 yearbook profile reflects this understanding, where she is described as having chosen a career as a “laboratory technician.”
Daly did not have to wait long to step into this role: the chemistry department at Queens offered her a job as a part-time laboratory assistant upon her graduation. But rather than stop there, she used the income from this position, along with a series of fellowships, to continue her graduate education. She completed her master’s degree at New York University in just one year, followed by a PhD at Columbia University in 1947.
World War II was ending when Daly entered Columbia. By this time, she was one of several women studying graduate-level chemistry there, many of whom were working with Mary L. Caldwell. Caldwell had developed a strong research profile in the biochemistry of nutrition. This was a prominent arena for women scientists during the first half of the 20th century, an essential part of the war effort, and something widely supported by grants from the business world. Under Caldwell, who was well known for her work on the digestive enzyme amylase, Daly researched how compounds produced in the body participate in digestion.
The title of Daly’s dissertation was “A Study of the Products Formed by the Action of Pancreatic Amylase on Corn Starch.” In her acknowledgments, she indicates that she benefitted from a strong network of women researchers who provided mutual intellectual support. She was awarded her doctoral degree just three years after enrolling in the program.
Eugenics is an immoral and pseudoscientific theory that claims it is possible to perfect people and groups through genetics and the scientific laws of inheritance. Eugenicists used an incorrect and prejudiced understanding of the work of Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to support the idea of “racial improvement.”
In their quest for a perfect society, eugenicists labeled many people as “unfit,” including ethnic and religious minorities, people with disabilities, the urban poor, and LGBTQ individuals. Discussions of eugenics began in the late 19th century in England and then spread to other countries, including the United States. Most industrialized countries had organizations devoted to promoting eugenics by the end of World War I.
Occam’s razor, principle stated by the Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham (1285–1347/49) that pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” The principle precedes simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred. The principle is also expressed as “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.”
Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: ‘Move fast and break things.’ The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.
The callousness of the wrecking ball that is pulverizing USAID, threatening the lives of children in Sudan, and AIDS vaccination protocols that will keep the virus from metastasizing into something worse, but it doesn’t matter when you don’t think that Sudanese children are humans and that the United States Agency for International Development is the extension of soft power. The agency was created in 1961 under the Kennedy administration to counteract the spread of communism (when the Republican Party cared about that sort of thing). Particularly, Ketamine DOGE and the six Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might have something against the agency aiding in the dismantling of Apartheid. I can see his sensitivity in this area could send him into “full demon mode.” Minus one MNT because of racist posts online (I thought that was a qualifier for the job).
I also thought we were afraid of TikTok and the Chinese government stealing our information? We’re apparently cool with man-sized (not sure of their genitalia) mutant-shelled reptiles with grandma’s social security number. After “saving” it for Gen Alpha (who will be eighteen in 2028), it’s suddenly unavailable in at least the Apple App Stores.
Seizing our social security numbers could be valuable for feeding into a social media AI shredder. Think of an online world where you exhaustively have to question reality.
But in full demon mode, why would you care when your beliefs stem from the belief that resources are only due to a select few, and the undeserving “others,” the aliens, and the “feebleminded” should be “pruned” out of the human family. That is eugenics.
“Move fast and break things” is a phrase that comes from privilege. It became a Silicon Valley idiom the moments after Zuckerberg uttered the phrase. It means that you’re comfortable flying by the seat of your pants, with a minimal or zero business plan, because you have relatives (usually, a deep-pocketed “daddy”) who can clean up your screw-ups. Be the “bull in the China shop” – smash things galore. The well-heeled “clean up on aisle five” also connects with traditional media, giving you favorable coverage in print, cable, and Internet media. Or, just own a platform or two. Thus, you’re not an emotionally cold sociopath, you’re a titan of industry, a genius.
You become famous for cooking up a cockamamie scheme to place a billion people on Mars: a planet with no oxygen, two years travel at current rocket speeds, if you survive the small asteroids or meteors colliding with your spaceship, or the radiation shielding, or the stir-craziness of floating for two years straight. Mars is 38% of Earth’s gravity, thus the new Martians could never come back home and stand up on whatever is LEFT of Mother Earth. After a generation of deadly radiation that if they survive it, will change their DNA to something truly alien, so a Martian and an Earthling could not plan a family. Lastly, sandstorms and Mars quakes. This great exodus idea had to be after the ketamine kicked in.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” Of two competing theories, the simplest one is preferable.
Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Benjamin Franklin’s reply: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Perhaps, in this case, the simplest explanation is not preferable.
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Computer Science, Diversity in Science, Electrical Engineering
Peripherals
U.S. Patent No. 4,528,626
Inducted in 1997
Born March 2, 1957
Mark Dean and his co-inventor Dennis Moeller created a microcomputer system with bus control means for peripheral processing devices. Their invention paved the way for the growth in the Information Technology industry by allowing the use of plug-in subsystems and peripherals like disk drives, video gear, speakers, and scanners.
Born in Jefferson City, Tennessee, Dean received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee, his master’s in electrical engineering from Florida Atlantic University, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Early in his career at IBM, Dean was chief engineer working with IBM personal computers. The IBM PS/2 Models 70 and 80 and the Color Graphics Adapter are among his early work; he holds three of IBM’s original nine PC patents.
Topics: African Americans, Agriculture, Black History Month, Botany, Civics, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity in Science
As a botany and agriculture teacher to the children of ex-slaves, Dr. George Washington Carver wanted to improve the lot of “the man farthest down,” the poor, one-horse farmer at the mercy of the market and chained to land exhausted by cotton.
Unlike other agricultural researchers of his time, Dr. Carver saw the need to devise practical farming methods for this kind of farmer. He wanted to coax them away from cotton to such soil-enhancing, protein-rich crops as soybeans and peanuts and to teach them self-sufficiency and conservation.
Dr. Carver achieved this through an innovative series of free, simply-written brochures that included crop information, cultivation techniques, and recipes for nutritious meals. He also urged the farmers to submit soil and water samples for analysis and taught them livestock care and food preservation techniques.
In 1906, he designed the Jessup Wagon, a demonstration laboratory on wheels, which he believed to be his most significant contribution toward educating farmers.
Dr. Carver’s practical and benevolent approach to science was based on a profound religious faith to which he attributed all his accomplishments. He always believed that faith and inquiry were not only compatible paths to knowledge, but that their interaction was essential if truth in all its manifold complexity was to be approximated.
Always modest about his success, he saw himself as a vehicle through which nature, God, and the natural bounty of the land could be better understood and appreciated for the good of all people.
Dr. Carver took a holistic approach to knowledge, which embraced faith and inquiry in a unified quest for truth. Carver also believed that commitment to a Larger Reality is necessary if science and technology are to serve human needs rather than the egos of the powerful. His belief in service was a direct outgrowth and expression of his wedding of inquiry and commitment. One of his favorite sayings was:
“It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.”
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Civics, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, Women in Science
Dr. Alexa Canady was the first African American woman in the United States to become a neurosurgeon.
I attended a summer program for minority students at the University of Michigan after my junior year. I worked in Dr. Bloom’s lab in genetics and attended a genetic counseling clinic. I fell in love with medicine.
Alexa Irene Canady had almost dropped out of college as an undergraduate, but after recovering her self-confidence she went on to qualify as the first African American woman neurosurgeon in the United States.
Alexa Canady earned a B.S. degree in zoology from the University of Michigan in 1971, and graduated from the medical school there in 1975. “The summer after my junior year,” she explains, “I worked in Dr. Bloom’s lab in genetics and attended a genetic counseling clinic. I fell in love with medicine.” In her work as a neurosurgeon, she saw young patients facing life-threatening illnesses, gunshot wounds, head trauma, hydrocephaly, and other brain injuries or diseases. Throughout her twenty-year career in pediatric neurosurgery, Dr. Canady has helped thousands of patients, most of them age ten or younger.
Her career began tentatively. She almost dropped out of college while a mathematics major, because “I had a crisis of confidence,” she has said. When she heard of a chance to win a minority scholarship in medicine, “it was an instant connection.” Her additional skills in writing and debate helped her earn a place at the University of Michigan Medical School, and she graduated cum laude in 1975.
Such credentials still could not shield her from prejudice and dismissive comments. As a young black woman completing her surgical internship at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1975, on her first day of residency, she was tending to her patients when one of the hospital’s top administrators passed through the ward. As he went by, she heard him say, “Oh, you must be our new equal-opportunity package.” Just a few years later, while working as a neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia from 1981 to 1982, her fellow physicians voted her one of the top residents.
Dr. Canady was chief of neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan from 1987 until her retirement in June 2001. She holds two honorary degrees: a doctorate of humane letters from the University of Detroit-Mercy, awarded in 1997, and a doctor of science degree from the University of Southern Connecticut, awarded in 1999. She received the Children’s Hospital of Michigan’s Teacher of the Year award in 1984 and was inducted into the Michigan Woman’s Hall of Fame in 1989. In 1993, she received the American Medical Women’s Association President’s Award and in 1994 the Distinguished Service Award from Wayne State University Medical School. In 2002, the Detroit News named Dr. Canady Michigander of the Year.
Dr. George Carruthers, [right], and William Conway, a project manager at the Naval Research Institute, examine the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph, the first Moon-based observatory Carruthers developed for the Apollo 16 mission. Apollo 16 astronauts placed the observatory on the moon in April 1972.
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Instrumentation, NASA
Dr. George Carruthers, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, stands to the right of his invention, the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph. The first Moon-based observatory, Carruthers developed it for the Apollo 16 mission. He stands beside his colleague William Conway. Working for the Naval Research Laboratory, Carruthers had three years earlier received a patent for a Far Ultraviolet Electrographic Camera, which obtained images of electromagnetic radiation in short wavelengths.
Apollo 16 astronauts placed the observatory on the Moon in April 1972, where it sits today on the Moon’s Descartes highland region, in the shadow of the lunar module Orion. Asked to explain highlights of the instrument’s findings for a general audience, Dr. Carruthers said “The most immediately obvious and spectacular results were really for the Earth observations because this was the first time that the Earth had been photographed from a distance in ultraviolet (UV) light so that you could see the full extent of the hydrogen atmosphere, the polar auroras and what we call the tropical airglow belt.”
Dr. Carruthers made the first detection of molecular hydrogen in space, in 1970, using a sounding rocket. He developed a rocket instrument that obtained a UV image of Comet Halley, and an instrument with two cameras, with different far-UV wavelength sensitivities, used on the STS-39 space shuttle mission in 1991. He also worked on UV imaging of Earth’s polar auroras and of the faint photochemical luminescence found in the upper atmosphere, with an instrument, Global Imaging Monitor of the Ionosphere (GIMI), on a Department of Defense satellite, the Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS), launched in 1999. In 2012, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technology achievement. Dr. Carruthers extended his work beyond his scientific endeavors; in the 1980s, he helped launch a program called the Science and Engineers Apprentice Program, allowing high school students to do research at the Naval Research Laboratory. He also taught science classes at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Carruthers passed away on Dec. 26, 2020, and is remembered for his contributions to physics, astronomy, and education.
Physics and Nano 