This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
SCIENCE SPECTRUM


Science spectrum champions the advancements made in all areas of scientific inquiry, whether those strides are made by individual innovators or through the resources of enterprisng organizations.


raging for four years. After the war, Carver studied botany at Iowa State Agri- cultural College. When he began in 1891, Carver was the first Black student, and later had the opportunity to teach as a faculty member. Carver’s research at the experiment station in plant pathology and mycology first gained him national recognition as a botanist. In 1896, Booker T.


Washington, the first principal and president of the Tuskegee Institute, invited Carver to head its Agriculture Department.


Titans of Science B


otanist George Washington Carver is believed to have been born in Missouri in January 1864. By then the American Civil War on the slavery question had been


ONE HUNDRED YEARS IN THE LIVES OF BLACK PIONEERING SCIENTISTS


twenty-six years. The ICY was later renamed Cheyney University of Pennsylva- nia.


George Washington Carver


Carver taught there for 47 years, developing the department into a research center. He taught methods of crop rotation, introduced alternative cash crops for farmers that would also improve the soil of areas heavily cultivated in cotton, initiated research into crop products, and taught generations of black students farming techniques for self-sufficiency.


Eighteen-sixty-four was the year for another momentous occasion in Black science history. Rebecca Lee Crumpler graduated from New England Fe- male Medical College, becoming the first Black woman medic in the United States. Three years later, Rebecca J. Cole became the second African American woman to receive an M.D. degree. By the time the war ended in 1865, Crumpler had joined other Black physicians to care for thousands of freed slaves. Black doctors were not allowed to work everywhere, but unlike Crumpler who was able to serve with the federal government agency that aided freed slaves (1865–1872), segregation contin- ued to impose race-based barriers to employment in academia. More than a decade after the first Black female medics


graduated, Edward Alexander Bouchet earned a Ph.D. in physics. Bouchet was the first Black natural scientist to graduate from Yale University, but was unable to land a postdoc position to perform research under the supervision and mentorship of a more senior researcher as Carver had. Bouchet moved to Phila- delphia soon after his doctorate and took a job at the Institute for Colored Youth (ICY), where he taught physics and chemistry for


90 USBE&IT I WINTER 2013


About two hundred miles from ICY, Daniel Hale Williams was born in 1858 in Hollidaysburg, PA. When he gradu- ated from the Chicago Medical College, Black doctors were still barred from practice in the city hospitals. As a result, in 1891, Williams started the Provident Hospital and a training school for nurses in Chicago, IL. Williams is best remembered as one of the first to successfully perform open heart surgery. As in Chicago he went on to establish a training school for Black nurses in Washington, D.C. when he was appointed surgeon- in-chief of Freedman’s Hospital in 1893. Two years later, he co-founded the National Medical Asso- ciation (NMA) for African American doctors. The NMA is now the collective voice of more than 30,000 African American physi- cians and the patients they serve.


Edward Alexander Bouchet


Daniel Hale Williams


Before the end of the 1800s, Illinois saw another Black scientist enter the field. Alfred O. Coffin received a master’s and Ph.D. in zoology at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1889. Five years later, Lloyd Augustus Hall was born in Elgin, IL. A generation earlier, Hall’s grandmother came to Illinois via the “Underground Railroad” at age sixteen. After graduating high school, Hall went on to study pharmaceutical chemistry at Northwestern University, earning a bachelor of science degree there and his master’s at the University of Chicago. Hall’s work contributed to the science of food preservation. By the end of his career, Hall had amassed 59 United States patents. Another famed chemist was Saint Elmo Brady, the first


www.blackengineer.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120