Dr. May Edward Chinn
Dr. May Edward Chinn was the first African American woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College and was advocate for poor patients. She was born in MA but grew up in New York City.
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver was a renown agricultural scientist, farmer, and inventor. Born enslaved, at the tail end of the Civil War, he was raised by his former owners in Missouri. At one point he and his family were captured by slave raiders, before eventually being returned. He showed a keen interest in nature and plants that permeated through his life and career.
Dr. Lloyd Noel Ferguson
Dr. Lloyd Noel Ferguson born in Oakland in 1918, was a chemist, entrepreneur, mentor, and STEM literacy advocate. Despite growing up in poverty, he had a strong interest in chemistry during his childhood. He created his first lab in his backyard and made several inventions, some of which he sold. After high school he worked in construction and as a porter for a railroad company to save money for college. He received a BS (1936) with honors and PhD (1940) in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, becoming the first person in his family to attend college and the first African American to obtain a Chemistry PhD at Berkeley.
Dr. Jessie Isabelle Price
Dr. Jessie Isabelle Price was a pioneering veterinary microbiologist who researched parasites, infections, and microbial diseases affecting ducks and other waterfowls.
Dr. Ernest Everett Just
Dr. Ernest Everett Just was an extremely skilled experimental embryologist who studied egg fertilization and was the first African American to work at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to Charles Frazier Just Jr and Mary Matthew Just. After his father’s death, his family moved to James Island, a Gullah community, where he attended the school that his mother founded and directed. Quite the precocious individual, he left at 12 to attend the Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanics College (now South Carolina State College). At 15 he graduated with his Licentiate of Instruction (1899), which allowed him to teach at any Black school in South Carolina. Finding teaching unappealing, he went up north and attended Kimball Union Academy, a private boarding school, in New Hampshire. He then graduated as the only magna cum laude in his class with a BA (1907) in Zoology, Special Honors in Botany and History, and Honors in Sociology from Dartmouth College. He also was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Through a connection, he ended up at the University of Chicago where he completed his PhD (1916) in Zoology and Physiology focusing on experimental embryology.
Mary Winston Jackson
Mary Winston Jackson was a mathematician and aerospace engineer, and the first African American Female engineer to work at NASA. Born in Hampton, Virginia, she always had a gift for arithmetic.
Dorothy Mclendon
Dorothy McClendon, born in Louisiana, was an African-American microbiologist who researched microorganisms that degraded military tank insulation.
Dr. Edgar Julian Duncan (Julian)
Dr. Julian Duncan was a Caribbean botanist whose tissue culture technique allowed for the mass production of plant products in the Islands. Born on the island of St. Vincent, he always had a fascination with plants while growing up. He obtained a BS in Botany and Zoology from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and his PhD in Fungal Genetics and Cytology at University of St. Andrew’s in Scotland.
Samuel Proctor Massie Jr.
Dr. Samuel Proctor Massie Jr. was an African-American chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project, antibiotics, environment, and infectious diseases.
Dr. Edward Alexander Bouchet
Dr.Edward Alexander Bouchet was an African-American mathematician and physicist who was the first African-American to graduate with a PhD in the United States.