Black scientists have contributed to society and made groundbreaking discoveries throughout history, right up to today.
Black scientists have helped to launch us into space, created new disease treatments, and developed world-changing technologies. Yet the achievements and contributions of Black American scientists to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are often forgotten or unrecognized.
From the “human computers” who helped launch astronauts into space, to Mae Jemison, the first Black female astronaut to launch into space. Here are just a few of the amazing Black scientists whose contributions have helped to change the world.
Charles Drew (1904-1950)
Dr. Charles Drew was a brilliant, pioneering doctor who developed new methods for storing blood for transfusions and created the first blood bank.
Dr, Drew attended Amherst College in Massachusetts and then McGill University of Medicine in Montreal. At McGill, he earned the J. Francis Williams Fellowship, an award given to the top five students in the graduating class, and studied under bacteriologist John Beattie, who was studying how fluid treatment could aid shock victims, according to the American Chemical Society.
After WWII raged, Drew began the work that would come to define his legacy. In 1940 he became the director of the “Blood for Britain” project, which shipped blood and plasma to help treat the civilians and soldiers who were fighting the Nazis, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
He also standardized the protocols for collecting and storing blood, ultimately helping to pilot a national blood-banking program in 1941. Drew made many innovations that are now mainstays of blood collection, such as mobile blood banks.
In the 1940s, Because of racism and segregation, the U.S. Army said Blacks were not allowed to donate blood. But even after this policy was lifted, Blacks were allowed to donate, but the blood could only be given to other Blacks.
Dr. Drew condemned these policies as unscientific and discriminatory. Contrary to a popular myth, Dr. Drew died after a car crash in 1950. He was treated by white doctors at a local hospital, and he was not denied a blood transfusion, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Clarice Phelps – an unlikely scientist
As a kid, according to CNN News, Clarice Phelps often turned to one image for inspiration. In the seventh grade, while most youngsters hung ’90s pop band and movie posters on their walls, Clarise had a poster of the first Black female astronaut, Mae Jemison on her wall.
“Mae started it all for me,” said Phelps, who in learning about Jemison realized she – a Black girl from Nashville’s Edgehill public housing – could reach for big dreams, too.
Clarise faced multiple roadblocks, including racial and gender bias on her way to helping make a discovery that would change how scientists chart the building blocks of the universe.
Growing up poor with three sisters and a single mom, there were few things to influence this “unlikely scientist,” other than a stack of home encyclopedias and “Beakman’s World” on TV. But despite the hardships, Phelps was a determined student.
Once, after a childhood music teacher sneered at her pawn shop-bought violin, Phelps devoted hours of practice to earn first chair in the orchestra, she said in a 2019 TEDx Talk. “I poured my heart and soul into that violin because I saw it as an extension of who I wanted to be,” she said.
Phelps was later selected into a magnet school, where she met two teachers who, she said, were “instrumental” in nurturing her passion for science. That love for experimentation and discovery prompted her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Tennessee State University and later enlist in the US Navy’s Nuclear Power School.
Phelps then turned her sights on radiochemistry – the study of radioactive substances. And yes, she put up with the bias and racism that was always present.
“For the first 18 years of my career, I was the only Black woman in my field. When I was in the Navy, I was the only Black girl in my division. Afterward in my lab, I was the only Black woman in the whole facility – and initially, they thought I was the janitor,” she told CNN, recalling requests to grab the trash.
“It’s isolating,” said Phelps, who after also served as an engineering laboratory technician aboard the USS Ronald Reagan. “You feel like you have to represent your entire race and descend the racial stereotypes … especially in nuclear and radiochemistry.”
Filling a gap in scientific knowledge
In 2010, Phelps joined an international mission to do something else unprecedented: Create Element 117.
For years, the Periodic Table of the elements had a single square in the seventh row of elements that scientists had been struggling to fill. No element with the precise chemical and physical properties to fit that spot in the familiar chart had been found or synthesized.
It would have to have 117 protons in its core. And like other so-called “superheavy elements” that don’t exist in nature, it would have to be created in a lab. As part of the discovery team, Phelps purified the element berkelium to create a film – a painstaking, months-long process.
The discovery of tennessine, the second heaviest element, was officially announced in Dubna, Russia, by a Russian–American collaboration in April 2010, which makes it the most recently discovered element as of 2023.
The experiment itself was repeated successfully by the same collaboration in 2012 and by a joint German–American team in May 2014. In June 2016, the IUPAC published a declaration stating that the discoverers had suggested the name tennessine after Tennessee, United States, a name which was officially adopted in November 2016.
There are, of course, many, many more Black scientists deserving of being mentioned. This writer chose these two scientists because of their extraordinary accomplishments.
