Field of excellence
Science & Invention
Black American inventors, scientists, and engineers.
On the timeline
- March 1864Rebecca Lee Crumpler, first Black woman physician
Crumpler becomes the first African American woman to earn a US medical degree.
- 1876Edward Bouchet earns a PhD
Bouchet becomes the first African American to earn a doctorate in the US (physics, Yale).
- November 20, 1923Garrett Morgan patents the traffic signal
Self-taught inventor Garrett Morgan patents a three-position traffic signal — after earlier inventing a smoke hood that saved lives in a 1916 tunnel disaster.
- 1940Charles Drew pioneers blood banking
Drew's work on blood plasma storage saves countless lives.
- August 30, 1983Guion Bluford, first Black American in space
Bluford flies aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
- September 12, 1992Mae Jemison, first Black woman in space
Jemison orbits Earth aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- part of (incoming)·PersonPercy Julian
Pioneering chemist who synthesized medicinal drugs from plants, enabling mass production of progesterone, testosterone, and cortisone, and developed a soy-based firefighting foam; held over 130 patents.
- part of (incoming)·PersonKatherine Johnson
NASA mathematician whose orbital-mechanics calculations were critical to the first US crewed spaceflights, including John Glenn's orbit and the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
- part of (incoming)·PersonDorothy Vaughan
NASA mathematician and the agency's first African-American supervisor; a self-taught FORTRAN programmer who led the transition of the West Area Computers into electronic computing.
- part of (incoming)·PersonGladys West
Mathematician whose satellite modeling of the Earth's shape and gravity provided the geodetic accuracy that underpins the Global Positioning System (GPS).
- part of (incoming)·PersonAnnie Easley
NASA computer scientist whose code for the Centaur rocket stage helped enable launches of probes like Cassini, and who analyzed early energy and hybrid-vehicle systems.
- part of (incoming)·PersonBenjamin Banneker
Self-taught mathematician, astronomer, and almanac author who helped survey the boundaries of the District of Columbia and challenged Thomas Jefferson on slavery and equality.
- part of (incoming)·PersonShirley Ann Jackson
Theoretical physicist, first Black woman to earn a doctorate from MIT, first woman and first African American to chair the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.