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.
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.
Dr. Joan Murrell Owens
Dr.Joan Murell Owens was the first female African-American marine biologist and button coral expert. Dr.Owens grew up in a household that put education first as she showed a passion for the sea and its inhabitants from a young age.
Dr. Charles Henry Turner
Dr. Charles Henry Turner was an African-American zoologist, civil rights activist, and educator whose work provided insight into certain behaviors of vertebrates in the19th century.
Dr. Thomas Risley Odhiambo
Dr. Thomas Risley Odhiambo was a Kenyan born entomologist whose work classified new genera and species of the Miridae bugs of East Africa.