As we honor "Juneteenth", we pay homage to three trailblazing scientists
This week, people the world over will be celebrating the unofficial holiday known as “Juneteenth.” It’s a week-long celebration of the Abolition of Slavery here in the United States, which occurred on June 19th, 1865.
While Juneteenth has been a mostly low-key celebration for most of its existence, recent political events here in the USA have caused the date to take on a new relevance.
As a result, Juneteenth events have popped up all over the country, more often focusing not on the ending of Slavery, but on the contributions that African Americans have made to our country over the course of its existence.
With that spirit in mind, I thought I’d take this opportunity to use this month’s column to bring some attention to three African-American scientists who made contributions to our country over its history.
Earnest Everett Just
Earnest Just (1883-1941) started his career in the Sciences as an English teacher at Howard University. However, he soon was given more responsibilities and began teaching Biology (his area of expertise) as well.
Not long after that, he became the head of the Biology department at Howard and then was invited to work at the Wood’s Hole Marine Biology Lab in Massachusetts. While there, he became greatly sought after for the techniques he developed for handling marine invertebrate eggs and embryos.
While his race made it difficult for him to achieve the success he deserved in the American University system, he made multiple trips to Europe and was regarded there as a Celebrity Scientist. Over the course of his career, he published multiple books on the handling of marine eggs for experiment and cell biology.
To this day, many of the experimental techniques he developed are still used by biologists all over the world.
Benjamin Banneker
Born in 1731 Maryland to a Free African American woman and a former slave, Benjamin Banneker was a self-taught mathematician, surveyor and astronomer. Unfortunately, most of his journals and writings were destroyed in a fire that occurred on the day of his funeral, so the full extent of his contributions can never be properly assessed.
However, for many years he did publish an Almanac based on his Astronomical works, built his own wooden clock (by scaling up the parts of a borrowed pocket watch), and was part of the team that surveyed the area that would become Washington D.C.
One of Mr. Banneker’s more notable, non-scientific, achievements was his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. In his letter to Jefferson, he argued for more just and equitable treatment for his fellow African Americans and, basically called Jefferson a “criminal” for the crime of keeping his “brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression.”
Mary Jackson
Mary Jackson (1921-2005) was a “human computer” who started her career as a school teacher. In 1951, she was recruited by the pre-cursor to NASA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).
It was while at NACA (and later, NASA) that she performed her duties as a “computer,” running numbers through algorithms by hand, to come up with the numbers that the engineers needed to perform their tests and experiments. Later, she took engineering classes herself and became the first African American Female Engineer at NASA, eventually attaining the senior most title an Engineer could get there.
Along the way, she worked in the Office of Equal Opportunity and helped encourage other women of all races to pursue careers in Technology and Science. (And, yes, she was one of the three women featured in the film, Hidden Figures in 2016.)
Of course, I’ve just scratched the surface here. There are innumerable other African American Scientists that I could have featured, including perhaps the most important of them all, Jerry Lawson.
What’s that? You’ve never heard of Jerry Lawson? Well, you should have. He invented…the Video Game Cartridge.
Steven W. Disbrow is the proprietor of “Improv Chattanooga” on the South Side of town. He also creates e-commerce systems and reads comic books when he’s not on stage acting like a fool.