African-American Scientists: Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguably one of the most influential African-American Scientists alive today. He is basically an all-around astrophysicist extraordinaire, leaning more toward the public face of the field than the hard-core lab rat type.

Tyson grew up in New York City, attending public schools through graduation at the Bronx High School of Science. He went on to wrap himself in "ivy", graduating with a BA in Physics from Harvard and a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia University, with an MA in Astronomy in the meantime from the University of Texas at Austin, and has been a visiting research scientist and lecturer at Princeton. He is currently director of the prestigious Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.

Tyson isn't the geeky, shy sort of scientist. He's "out there" livin' large. He's handsome, muscular, and trades quips with talk show hosts. He makes frequent appearances on The History Channel's "The Universe" series and hosts PBS's "Nova ScienceNow" series, discussing everything cosmological, from black holes to the formation of the universe, our solar system, and even life on other planets. He analyzes images from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes from all over the planet, including Palomar and the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. He's edited or written nine books, and has another on the way, as well as chapters and articles in other publications, and about a dozen scholarly articles. I won't list here all the assorted honors, guest appearances, astronomy board memberships, and society memberships.

Twice (in 2001 and 2004) Tyson was named by President Bush to be a member of commissions to study America's role in space and to explore the future of space travel. I'll try not to hold it against him. In 2006, Tyson was appointed to the NASA advisory panel by the head of NASA.

He is the recipient of nine honorable degrees, the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and even has an asteroid named after him ("13123 Tyson").

And if all that wasn't enough, Tyson made Time Magazine's "Time 100" of 2007 (HERE), and was named "Sexiest Astrophysist Alive" by PEOPLE Magazine in 2000. Just look at that picture!

Here is Tyson's official website, which contains just about anything you would care to know about the man: http://research.amnh.org/~tyson/.


Image taken from HERE, where you can also find a short interview with Tyson.

African-American Scientists: Earnest Everett Just

February is Black History Month. It is a time for us to remember the sacrifices made by African American forefathers in building America, and the contributions they have made, and continue to make, toward making our nation great. When we think of those contributions, too many of us focus on the famous stereotypes: singers, sports stars, social and equal-rights figures, great though they are, but too often forgotten are those who contributed in the other fields. It is in this vein that I feature on this blog, each February, historical and contemporary African American Scientists.

Earnest Everett Just was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1883. His mother was a teacher, and thus knew full well the importance of a good education and the challenges facing African Americans to get an excellent education at that time. At 13, he was sent north, to New Hampshire, to attend a college preparatory school, Kimball Academy. He finished in only three years (instead of four) and graduated class valedictorian. He went on to Dartmouth College, specializing in cell biology studies, earning degrees in biology and history. Again, he was class valedictorian, as well as magna cum laude. Next he went to Howard University, where he eventually became the head of the Department of Zoology, and stayed until his retirement, except for a brief period during which he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Just's greatest contribution to science resonates even to my own career, studying live-cell physiology. Just believed in the radical notion of studying cells as close as possible to their natural state, looking at the whole, living cell rather than breaking it up into its component parts. He became well known for his studies of marine mammal reproduction and fertilization events, as well as cell division, parthenogenesis, effects of UV radiation on chromosome number, and studying the role of the cell surface in its overall physiological state, much of which took place at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole (one of several marine science centers set up over a hundred years ago). Like me, microscopy was his chosen mode of observation.

Increasingly frustrated with the racial prejudice in the United States, Just studied abroad starting in 1929, eventually studying in Italy, Germany, and France.

In 1940, Just was briefly a prisoner of war when Germany invaded France. The U.S. State Department negotiated his release, but he grew ill just before being captured, worsened during the imprisonment, and never fully recovered. He died of pancreatic cancer in October of 1941. He was survived by his wife and three children.

Here are some additional resources about the life and accomplishments of Earnest Everett Just:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Everett_Just

http://esperstamps.org/h19.htm

http://web2.ccpl.org/prvEmployees/HTML/scienceproject/ScienceWalk/Ernest%20Everett%20Just.html

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775692.html

http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/ernestjust.html


Picture taken from HERE.

African-American Scientists: Daniel Hale Williams

For the last of my Black History Month tributes to African-American Scientists, I spotlight Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, a pioneer in turn-of-the-century surgery and sterile procedure, founder of early African-American and integrated hospitals, and instructor of medicine.

A good bio from which much of this was taken:

http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/danielwilliams.html

Williams was born to a mixed-race family in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, January 18, 1856, the fifth of seven children. His father, also named Daniel Williams, a white man, was an active abolitionist. Daniel's mother was a free Black woman, Sarah Price Williams. Daniel's father was a barber and moved the family to Annapolis, Maryland but died shortly thereafter of tuberculosis, when Daniel was 11.

Although some members of the family lived as whites, and he could also have done so, Daniel refused to "pass" and actively identified himself as Black. Soon after his father died his mother sent her children to live with different relatives, except Daniel, who was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Baltimore, while she went to live in Illinois. After a while Daniel left his apprenticeship and followed her, but although the reunion was happy, his mother soon moved to Maryland with his sisters to rejoin the other children, and Daniel elected to stay in Illinois.

For the next several years he worked and lived with various cousins, but when he was 16 he struck out on his own and moved to Wisconsin, where he became a barber, living very happily with his employer's family, and also attended high school. His employer-cum foster father later financed his medical training at Northwestern University Medical School (known at the time as the Chicago Medical College). Initially, Williams was apprenticed to a well-known Civil War surgeon for the Union, Dr. Henry Palmer. Williams graduated in 1883.

Because of primitive social and medical circumstances existing in that era, much of Williams early medical practice called for him to treat patients in their homes, including conducting occasional surgeries on kitchen tables. In doing so, Williams utilized many of the emerging antiseptic, sterilization procedures of the day and thereby gained a reputation for professionalism. He was soon appointed as a surgeon on the staff of the South Side Dispensary and then a clinical instructor in anatomy at Northwestern. In 1889 he was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Health and one year later set for to create an interracial hospital.

On January 23, 1891 Daniel Hale Williams established the Provident Hospital and Training School Association, a three story building which held 12 beds and served members of the community as a whole. The school also served to train Black nurses and utilized doctors of all races. The hospital's success rate was phenomenal considering the financial and health conditions of the patient, and primitive conditions of most hospitals. Much can be attributed to Williams insistence on the highest standards concerning procedures and sanitary conditions.

Williams is perhaps best known for a surgery he performed at Provident Hospital in 1893. Internal surgery was almost unheard of at the time due to the high risk of infection. When a man came in who had been stabbed in the chest, Williams took the initiative to open the chest and perform surgery, suturing a cut through the pericardium (sac around the heart), then applying antiseptic procedures before closing. Cured, the patient walked out of the hospital 51 days later and lived another fifty years. Technically this isn't an open heart surgery, and similar surgeries had been performed in Europe on at least a couple occasions over the hundred years prior, yet Williams is often credited with "the first open heart surgery."

In February 1894, Daniel Hale Williams was appointed as Chief Surgeon at the Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C. and reorganized the hospital, creating seven medical and surgical departments, setting up pathological and bacteriological units, establishing a biracial staff of highly qualified doctors and nurses and established an internship program. Recognition of his efforts and their success came when doctors from all over the country traveled to Washington to view the hospital and to sit in on surgery performed there. Almost immediately there was an astounding increase in efficiency as well as a decrease in patient deaths.

During this time, Williams married Alice Johnson and the couple soon moved to Chicago after Daniel resigned from the Freedmen's hospital. He resumed his position as Chief Surgeon at Provident Hospital (which could now accommodate 65 patients) as well as for nearby Mercy Hospital and St. Luke's Hospital, an exclusive hospital for wealthy White patients. He was also asked to travel across the country to attend to important patients or to oversee certain procedures.

When the American Medical Association refused to accept Black members, Williams helped to set up and served as Vice-President of the National Medical Association. In 1912, Williams was appointed associate attending surgeon at St. Luke's and worked there until his retirement from the practice of medicine.

Upon his retirement, Daniel Hale Williams had bestowed upon him numerous honors and awards. He received honorary degrees from Howard and Wilberforce Universities, was named a charter member of the American College of Surgeons and was a member of the Chicago Surgical Society.

Williams died from a stroke on August 4, 1931, in Idlewild, Michigan, having set standards and examples for surgeons, both Black and White, for years to come.

African-American Scientists: Shirley Ann Jackson

Continuing my celebration of Black History Month, this week's featured African-American scientist is Shirley Ann Jackson, a theoretical physicist, world expert in nuclear regulation, and current president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

A good profile: http://www.rpi.edu/president/profile.html

Dr. Jackson is the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate from M.I.T. — in any subject. She is one of the first two African-American women to receive a doctorate in physics in the U.S. She is the first African-American to become a Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She is both the first woman and the first African-American to serve as the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and now the first African-American woman to lead a national research university. She also is the first African-American woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Shirley Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., in 1946. Strongly supported by her parents, she excelled in school, attending accelerated classes in math and science, and graduating in 1964 as valedictorian. She immediately entered M.I.T., studying theoretical physics while volunteering at the Boston City Hospital and the YMCA. Four years later she graduated with her bachelors degree, writing her dissertation on solid-state physics (which was at the forefront of theoretical physics at the time). Although accepted at Brown, Harvard, and the University of Chicago, Jackson decided to stay at MIT for her doctoral work, because she wanted to encourage more African American students to attend the institution. She earned her Ph.D. in elemental particle theory in1973.

In the '70s, Jackson focused on high-energy particle physics, including work at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. In the '80s and early '90s she worked on a wide array of physics including energy superlattices, superconductors, neutrino research, quantum physics, and opto-electronic materials, preparing or collaborating on over 100 scientific articles.

From 1991 to 1995, Dr. Jackson was professor of physics at Rutgers University, where she taught undergraduate and graduate students, conducted research on the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional systems, and supervised Ph.D. candidates. She concurrently served as a consultant in semiconductor theory to AT&T Bell Laboratories

By the mid-'90s Jackson increasingly became affiliated with politics and nuclear policy. In 1995 President Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Jackson to serve as Chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), continuing until 1999. As Chairperson, she was the principal executive officer of and the official spokesperson for the NRC. While in this role, Jackson worked with a number of world organizations and served as a liaison between our nation and others for nuclear issues, including the International Atomic Energy Agency. Jackson served 10 years as a member of the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, appointed by the governor.

Jackson holds an amazing 40 honorary doctoral degrees, including at Harvard University, and holds more awards than I could reasonably list here. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998 for her significant and profound contributions as a distinguished scientist and advocate for education, science, and public policy. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Foundation Hall of Fame (WITI) in June 2000. WITI recognizes women technologists and scientists whose achievements are exceptional.

Since 1999, Shirley Jackson has served as the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. Dr. Jackson is married to Dr. Morris A. Washington, also a physicist. They have one son, Alan, a graduate of Dartmouth College.

African-American Scientists: Guion S. Bluford, Jr.

Given the recent news of out-of-control astronauts, let's take a moment to revisit the heroic and accomplished record of the others. For instance, today, astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria broke the U.S. record for most time performing space walks as he performed some maintenance work on the International Space Station (CNN Story).

In continuing honor of Black History Month, this Thursday's tribute is for another astronaut of great accomplishment: Guion S. Bluford, Jr., known as "Guy". Bluford, who is now age 65, is an aerospace engineer, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force, retired astronaut with NASA's space shuttle program, and the first African-American to go into space.

His Wikipedia biography (which has a link to his NASA bio): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guion_S._Bluford

Guy was born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1942. I wonder about his first name, Guion. It leaves me scratching my head about the exact pronunciation, but I have to say it rates pretty high on my name-ranking system. Given his nickname is "Guy" I would conclude it is pronounced "guy-on." I couldn't find any information about his youth, except that he was an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America. Bluford received his BS in aerospace engineering from Penn State in 1964, then attended pilot training, earning his wings in 1966. He was promptly shipped off to Vietnam where he flew 144 missions, 65 of which were over North Vietnam, in less than two years. He soon returned to the U.S. where he became a flight trainer and executive.

Always busy achieving, Bluford found time to earn an MS in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1974, then his PhD in aerospace engineering with a minor in laser physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1978. Apparently his scientific research in his pre-astronaut years revolved around computational fluid dynamics regarding air flow around wing designs for planes and missiles and missle thrust vectoring. He has published at least three papers on these topics, but most of his work was for the military and not shared with the academic world.

Within a year of earning his Ph.D., Bluford became an astronaut with NASA (though he wasn't the first African-American accepted as an astronaut, that honor goes to Maj. Robert Lawrence, Jr., who died in a plane crash prior to going into space). Bluford became the first African-American in space onboard the Challenger in 1983 (the first mission to launch and land at night). He served on three additional space shuttle flights between then and 1992. He was a specialist operating the robotic arm (remote manipulator system), worked with avionics systems, was a key figure on Spacelab experiments, and dealt with payload safety issues. He has logged 688 hours in space. He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1997.

Of interesting note is Bluford's association with the Challenger Flag, a U.S. Capitol flag that was given to a Boy Scout troop, then flown on the last Challenger mission. After the flag was recovered (undamaged!) from the remains of the Challenger, Bluford (being an Eagle Scout and astronaut) was the emissary who returned the Challenger flag to Boy Scout Troop 514 of Monument, Colorado in December, 1986. On December 18 of that year, he presented the flag to the troop in a special ceremony at Falcon Air Force Base. The flag has since been honored at a number of ceremonies, including the Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City.

Bluford left NASA in 1993 to take a position as Vice President/General Manager of the Engineering Services Division of a company called NYMA inc., in Brook Park, Ohio. I couldn't find a home page for the company, but they do some sort of engineering contracts for the Department of Defense.

On his NASA page, Bluford's hobbies are listed as reading, swimming, jogging, racquetball, handball, and scuba, but in his own words, during his astronaut years: "The job is so fantastic, you don’t need a hobby. The hobby is going to work."

African-American Scientists: George Washington Carver

February is Black History Month. To celebrate this, I am going to feature an African American Scientist every Thursday this month.

My first choice is probably the most historically famous: George Washington Carver, a chemist, food scientist, botanist, and agriculturist.

Here is the Wikipedia biography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver

Carver was born into slavery in what is now known as Diamond, Missouri, most likely in 1864. His slave owner was a German immigrant named Moses Carver, who traded for George. As George Carver is later quoted, "When I was a child, my owner saw what he considered to be a good business deal and immediately accepted it. He traded me off for a horse." Baby George, his mother Mary, and a sister were later kidnapped from Moses Carver by Confederate raiders. By the time Moses was able to get George back, George had whooping cough, and his mother and sister were most likely dead. Soon slavery was abolished, and Moses Carver and his wife raised George and his brother Jim as their own children and taught them to read and write. Eventually George took his adopted father's last name as his own, by choice. You hear plenty of stories about abusive slave owners, but this makes me think that Moses Carver may have been the exception.

Because of his race, George met with difficulties in attending grade school, but didn't let that stop him from a good education. As Carver is quoted, "Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom." He moved from school to school, eventually graduating high school in Minneapolis, Kansas.

Carver also faced the same difficulty getting accepted into colleges, but was eventually successful. He started as the second African-American to attend Simpson College, in Iowa, but eventually moved to what was to become Iowa State College, as their first African-American student. It was there that he started using the middle name Washington, since another student had the same first and last name. After graduation, Carver stayed on as their first African-American Master's student, then faculty member. Carver eventually changed jobs to teach at the five-year old Tuskegee University, where he remained for 47 years until his death in 1943.

If you've ever heard of George Washington Carver, chances are the things you took away from the lesson were that Carver was an early Black scientist and that he invented all sorts of wonderful and exotic uses for the lowly peanut. Why peanuts? Because all the cotton farming down South had depleted nitrogen from the fields. Peanuts and other legumes replenished the nitrogen, so Carver encouraged farmers to plant them. But there were only so many uses for the plant (salted peanuts, anyone?). So to help all those farmers that had planted a nearly unmarketable crop, he invented lots of recipes and products for them and helped market them.

What was he reputed to have invented? Carver developed between one-hundred and three-hundred applications for peanuts and 118 for sweet potatoes, (http://www.npg.si.edu/edu/brush/guide/unit2/carver.html) including bleach, metal polish, paper, plastic, glue for postage stamps, printer's ink, plant milk, cooking oils, flour, instant coffee, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, cheese, dyes, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder, wood stains, varnish, soap, vinegar and cooking sauces. He made similar investigations into uses for cowpeas, soybeans and pecans. Also he authored three patents (one for cosmetics, and two for paints and stains). Now, I'd like to know exactly how a frickin' peanut can be turned into some of these products, but apparently he made it happen – and therein lies his talent. He also invented a form of peanut butter, but don't start thinking Jiff or Peter Pan peanut butter. It was more like the oily, gritty, unsugared organic sh*t you get at health stores. My wife buys that stuff to feed to our kids. I refuse to eat it. But apparently his was good enough to launch the invention.

Unfortunately, Carver was not a model scientist in terms of his practice. For one thing, he didn't keep a lab book, and kept all his recipes in his head, refusing to write them down. That means almost none of his inventions can be repeated and are therefore lost to time. Pretty sad. He wouldn't write down lists of inventions, either, which is why there is confusion about exactly how many he came up with. He also claimed God gave him his ideas for plant products. He hated teaching and was very bad at administrative work, preferring to dedicate himself to research (which he was eventually able to do). He had his own 2-room lab, much to the jealousy of other faculty, and lived (get this!) on the second floor of a woman's dormitory, accessing his room via a fire escape. He partnered with presidents and captains of industry to develop a number of novel uses, but almost never sought to capitalize off of his endeavors, often giving his advice and expertise freely. No one can say exactly how many of our plant-derived products came from his inspiration.

Carver died at age 76 after a fall down some stairs. He willed his entire savings to Tuskegee University, founding a fund in his name. He has since become an icon of American culture, a symbol of early African-American triumph over slavery and discrimination, and a pioneer of American science.

"Most people search high and wide for the keys to success. If they only knew, the key to their dreams lie within." -- George Washington Carver