Black History and Invention

During this shortest month of our calendar year, we pause to tip our hats to the many contributions African American have provided for our safety, convenience, welfare, entertainment, health, food supply, ease of travel, exploration, apparel, medicines, communications ability, and the list goes on.

I will offer these few short vignettes of some of those pioneers that we have all read about (well some of us), and a few that I have had the pleasure of meeting or taking part in giving them boarder recognition for their achievements in science, engineering, or medicine.

During the weeks of February, two or three will be highlighted.  I encourage parents and students to select one or two that strikes your fancy, conduct your own research, and share with a youngster or a friend what you have learned.

Since this is a short feature, some will not be mentioned.  That is why the investigations you will make on your own are so important.

Week 1

I had the good fortune to be present at the National Press club in Washington DC January 4, 1990 when the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation announced that George Washington Carver and Dr. Percy Lavon Julian would be formally inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame on April 8, 1990 on the two-hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the United States patent system. This was a high point in science and technology for African American history and for me personally since as President of the National Technical Association, it marked the first time a professional technical organization had the opportunity to vote for inductees. 

Dr. Percy Lavon Julian

Percy Lavon Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 11, 1899; his father was a railway mail clerk, and his grandfather had been a slave. He went to Fisk University in Nashville, a school for African Americans, where he taught until 1923. The talent of his students encouraged him to pursue his own dream, and he applied for a research fellowship at Harvard. He earned his Master's degree in a year. Julian received his Ph.D. at the University of Vienna in 1931. In 1935, with Josef Pikl, he first synthesized from this plant a chemical called physostigmine, or esserine, which could treat the sometimes blinding disease of glaucoma by reducing pressure inside the eyeball. This brought him international scientific acclaim. One day in 1939, a water leak in a tank of purified soybean oil created a strange byproduct and gave Julian a surprise insight: the soy sterol that had been created could be used to manufacture male and female hormones, progesterone and testosterone. Progesterone would prove useful in treating certain cancers and problem pregnancies.

Dr. George Washington Carver

As an agricultural chemist, Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. George Washington Carver was born in 1864 near Diamond Grove, Missouri on the farm of Moses Carver.  At the age of thirty, Carver gained acceptance to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, where he was the first black student. Carver had to study piano and art and the college did not offer science classes. Intent on a science career, he later transferred to Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in 1891, where he gained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1894 and a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture in 1897. Carver became a member of the faculty of the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanics (the first black faculty member for Iowa College), teaching classes about soil conservation and chemurgy.