Born December 5, 1895, Elbert Frank Cox earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Indiana. In 1925, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. He taught for 40 years at West Virginia State College and Howard University. After he retired, Howard established a scholarship fund in Cox's name to encourage future Black mathematicians. Elbert Frank Cox was born on December 5, 1895 in Evansville, Indiana. After graduating from Indiana University in 1917, Cox served in World War I and then pursued a career in teaching. In 1925, he earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University, becoming the first African American to earn the degree in the United States and, in fact, the world. After earning his degree, …show more content…
In 1925 -- the year he graduated from Cornell -- only 28 doctoral degrees were awarded in mathematics in the entire nation, and up until that year, fewer than 50 African Americans had received doctorates of any …show more content…
"Year after year, our master's students consistently did much better in departmental oral examinations on material they'd studied with Cox than on material they'd studied with me or from our colleagues Woodward, Claytor, and others," Blackwell was quoted as saying in the American Mathematical Monthly article. At Cox's retirement, Howard University's president noted that the mathematician had supervised more masters' theses than any other member of the faculty. He remained a full professor in the department until his retirement in 1966. During his career, Cox specialized in difference equations, interpolation theory, and differential equations. Among his professional honors were memberships in such educational societies as Beta Kappa Chi, Pi Mu Epsilon, and Sigma Pi Sigma. He was also active in the American Mathematical Society, the American Physical Society, and the American Physics Institute. Cox died on November 28, 1969, after a brief
Herman Russell Branson was an African American Physicist and Chemist who was born August 14, 1914. He is from Pocahontas Virginia. He was the son of a coal minor. His family moved to Washington, D.C during his adolescent years. Thanks to his mother's encouragement to read he became Valedictorian of his high school. During his adult hood he met his wife Corolynne Gray whom he married and they had two children a son named Herman and A daughter name Corolynne Gertrude.
Dr. Blackwell was appointed a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1941 for a year . At that time members of the Institute were automatically officially made visting fellows of Princeton University , and thus Blackwell was listed in its bulletin as such . This caused considerable ruckus as there had never been a black student much less faculty fellow , at the University most
Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3, 1904 in Washington, D.C. He was very athletic as a child. Charles attended Dunbar High School where he won letters in track, baseball, basketball and football. He won the James E. Walker Memorial Medal as outstanding all-around athlete.
Herman Hudson was born in Biringham, Alabama in 1923 and grew up to get his bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees from the university of michigan. He had a long career at teaching at other colleges and universitys until the landed at Indiana University. During his time there he established all of the African American studies institues at the college and helped inprove race relations among the community.
David Hilbert was born in Konigsberg, Prussia on January 23, 1862 and went on to pursue a career in mathematics in his mother country before receiving a doctorate in 1885 for his study and thesis of invariant theory (David Hilbert, n.d.). Hilbert went on to begin a professional academic career at Konigsberg, where he taught until 1895 when he was "appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Gottingen, a post that he would hold for the remainder of his life.
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard University, and he focused on history, civil rights, and sociology. In 1909, Dubois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Soul of Black Folks was one of Dubois’ great works in 1903.
Willie Hobbs, Moore was born in 1934, she was the very first African American woman to earn a PH.D in Physics from the University of Michigan in 1972, under the direction of Samuel Krimm. After she received her doctorate she continued research on specral proteins, while in Michigan Moore worked with Datamax Corp. Moore has also held positions in engineering in which she was responsible for theoretical
After he graduated from Union College in 1854 he studied law. “His legal career in New York City was noted for two cases- one in which he secured the freedom of Negro slaves in New York who were traveling between two slave states, and another in which he secured equal rights for Negroes in seating and in service on city transportation.” He became involved with politics and became vice president in 1880, and sworn in as president in 1881. (Doren 14)
In 1943 through 1944 Wilkins taught at the Tuskegee Institute, where most of the students were black. That year the institute offered graduate-level instruction, he returned to the University of Chicago where he worked on the Manhattan project metallurgical laboratory from 1944 to 1946. Wilkins continued to produce an extensive number of mathematical papers on a wide variety of topics. In 1944, four of his papers appeared in the bulletin in the mathematical biophysics. The papers were on the growth of solutions of linear differential equations; differently self-conjugant at joint integral equations; multiple integral problems in parametric form in the calculus of variations; and A note on skewness and kurtosis. In 1946 after leaving the Manhattan project, Wilkins worked in private industries, he worked as a mathematician at the American Optical Company in Buffalo, New York until 1950. In 1947 he married his first wife Gloria Stewart and had two children, Sharon and J. Ernest Wilkins
After her graduation in that same year, she was employed at the same university she used to go to. She worked as an assistant professor on teaching zoology. In 1926, Roger Arliner Young received a Master of Science in Zoology from University of Chicago, where she was designated to go to the honor society for biosciences called the Sigma Xi. In 1927 through 1936 she used her summers to do research in a biological laboratory in Massachusetts. It was the top laboratory of the US. It was an accomplishment because she was the first black woman to ever conduct and give research in her field of work. Another accomplishment she has completed is, in 1940, she was the first black woman to receive a doctoral degree in zoology, Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. Soon hardships became to overwhelm her. She had many problems such as lots of work and not enough money. In 1935, Dr. Young was not able to teach anymore at the Howard University. Fortunately for Roger, in 1940, she was able to complete her doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1940 to around the 1950’s, Roger taught at the North Carolina College for Negroes and at Shaw University, North Carolina. She also taught at colleges for blacks in Texas, Louisiana, and
Elbert Frank Cox was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. As of today he receives a little recognition as he did back in his days. Yet some may ask: How was his early life? What were his mathematical achievements? Although many African American men made contributions to the mathematical world like the self taught Benjamin Banneker(d.1806), the first African American to teach in a predominantly white college Charles Lewis Reason(d.1893), the first African American to attend John Hopkins University Kelly Miller(d.1939), and many more great African American mathematicians. Elbert Frank Cox was a phenomenal African American mathematician and pioneer
Despite his outstanding credentials, Wilkins could not find a position at a research university. During 1943 and 1944 he was a mathematics instructor
students, wrote two books and published more than 80 papers during his career. He held 12 honorary degrees, including from Harvard, Yale, Carnegie Mellon and Howard universities and from the National University of Lesotho. Blackwell died in Berkeley, California on July 8, 2010 at the age of 91. Blackwell is survived by four of his eight children: Hugo of Berkeley; Ann Blackwell and Vera Gleason of Oakland; and Sarah Hunt of Houston, Texas. He was preceded in death by his wife, Ann Madison Blackwell, who died in 2006 after 62 years of marriage; and children Julia Madison Blackwell, David Harold Blackwell Jr., Grover Johnson Blackwell and Ruth Blackwell Herch. David Blackwell had became to be an mathematician and statistician, was the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1965) and is especially known for his contributions to the theory of duels. Blackwell was also a pioneer in textbook writing and game theory. Blackwell wrote one of the first Bayesian (relating to or denoting statistical methods based on Bayes' theorem) textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics. Blackwell was also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (Tau chapter – University of Illinois at
As you probably know it's Black history month, a month to celebrate the accomplishments of African Americans. In celebration of Black History Month, the contributions made by African American Inventors and their importance to American culture was researched. Do you use elevators? I am sure you do. Alexander Miles was born on May 18, 1838, in Duluth a city in Minnesota . Alexander parents are Mary Pope and Michael Andrea.
On September 11, 1911 Luther Terry was born in Alabama. He graduated from Birmingham Southern University in 1931 with his B.S. then again from Tulane University in 1935 with his M.D. his internships and residencies were at Birmingham at Hillman Hospital and Cleveland hospitals. He was a professor with multiple colleges before accepting positions with the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital and the National Institutes of Health.