Black history month: 10 MORE African American scientists and inventors
A post about Vivien Thomas mutated into a second post about African American scientists and inventors! (Thanks to moonshaz for suggesting Vivien Thomas.)
Vivien Thomas
Footprints Through Time: Vivien Thomas (1910-1985)
Vivien T. Thomas was born in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1910, the son of a carpenter. His family moved to Nashville, where Vivien graduated with honors from Pearl High School. Later in 1929 he was preparing for college and medical school when his savings for tuition disappeared following the October stock market crash. With no means for education, he took a job as a laboratory technician at Vanderbilt University's medical school, working for Dr. Alfred Blalock.
Thomas still hoped to save tuition money to earn his own medical degree, but the Great Depression worsened and the research with Blalock grew. Soon Thomas was working sixteen hours a day in the laboratory, performing operations on animals that would advance Blalock's studies of high blood pressure and traumatic shock. For his work, Thomas invented a heavy spring device that could apply varying levels of pressure. Blalock and Thomas' work at Vanderbilt created a new understanding of shock, showing that shock was linked to a loss of fluid and blood volume.
When Blalock became chief surgeon at Johns Hopkins University's medical school in 1941, he insisted that Vivien Thomas be hired to join his team there. At Johns Hopkins, Thomas and Blalock pioneered the field of heart surgery with a procedure to alleviate a congenital heart defect, the Tetralogy of Fallot ("blue baby syndrome"). Sufferers faced brutally short life expectancies. Working with cardiologist Helen Taussig, Blalock and Thomas developed an operation that would deliver more oxygen to the blood and relieve the constriction caused by the heart defect. Thomas tested the procedure -- a refinement of one that they had created in laboratory dogs -- on animals to make sure it would work. In 1944, with Thomas advising Blalock, the first "blue baby" operation was successfully performed on 15-month-old Eileen Saxon.
Thomas was a key partner in hundreds of "blue baby" operations, performing pre- and post-operation procedures on patients as well as advising in the operating room. At the same time, he continued to manage Blalock's ongoing laboratory research.
As head of the Hopkins surgical research laboratory, Thomas also taught a generation of surgeons and lab technicians. The residents and research fellows who worked with Thomas testified to his unique abilities and his dedication.
SOURCE.
Other links & references:
-http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/vthomas.htm
-http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/stlm/vtfund.html
-Kennedy DM. In search of Vivien Thomas. Texas Heart Inst J 2005; 32(4):477-8.
-----------------------------
Samuel Lee Kountz Jr.
Samuel Lee Kountz Jr. was a physician and pioneer in organ transplantation, particularly renal transplant research and surgery. An Arkansas success story, he overcame the limitations of his childhood as an African American in the Delta region of a racially segregated state to achieve national and world prominence in the medical field.
Sam Kountz was born on October 20, 1930, in Lexa (Phillips County) to the Reverend J. S. Kountz, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Emma. He was the eldest of three sons. Kountz lived in a small town with an inadequate school system in one of the most impoverished regions of the state. He attended a one-room school in Lexa until the age of fourteen, at which point he transferred to a Baptist boarding school in the same town; he later graduated from Morris Booker College High School in Dermott (Chicot County).
Kountz applied to Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (AM&N), now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), in 1948, but he failed the entrance examination. Undaunted, he applied directly to Lawrence A. Davis Sr., president of Arkansas AM&N, who was so impressed by Kountz’s ambition, his inquiring mind, and his determination to become a physician that he admitted him despite his scores. During Kountz’s senior year, he conducted a tour of the campus for Senator J. William Fulbright, who encouraged him in his goal of becoming a physician. Kountz earned a BS in chemistry in 1952, graduating third in his class.
After college, Kountz went to graduate school and earned an MS in biochemistry from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville in 1956. His MD degree was conferred in 1958 from the University of Arkansas Medical Center’s School of Medicine in Little Rock (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences). He married Grace Atkin, a teacher, on June 9, 1958, one day after his graduation from medical school. They had three children. An internship at the prestigious Stanford Service, a San Francisco hospital, followed during the next two years. He completed a rigorous surgical residency there in 1965. Two significant experiences during these years shaped Kountz’s future. The first was studying with Roy Cohn, one of the world’s pioneers in organ transplantation. The second was receiving the Giannini Fellowship in surgery that supported his postdoctoral training at the San Francisco County Hospital and his postgraduate medical studies at Hammersmith Hospital in London, England, from 1962 to 1963, where he continued his surgical training.
The apex of his achievement as a resident physician at Stanford was performing, in 1961, the first kidney transplant between a recipient and a donor who were not identical twins. This single achievement guaranteed his status as a pioneer in surgery. Throughout his career, he performed more than 500 kidney transplants. In 1965, he performed the first renal transplant in Egypt as a visiting Fulbright professor in the United Arab Republic.
After returning from overseas, Kountz was made assistant professor of surgery at Stanford University in 1966, becoming an associate professor in 1967. He was also director of the transplant service of the University of California at San Francisco until 1972. It was here that Kountz made the breakthrough observation that high doses of a steroid hormone, methylprednisolone, arrested the rejection of transplanted kidneys. This discovery led directly to the current drug regimens that make organ transplants using donations from unrelated donors routine. The years between 1967 and 1972 were his most productive. The above discovery and his advocacy of earlier re-implantation-that is, the implantation of a second kidney at the earliest signs of rejection-were his two greatest contributions to the field.
Kountz became professor of surgery and director of the transplant service at the University of California at San Francisco. The combination of an academic and a clinical appointment clearly showed the pathway he intended to follow. After five years there, Kountz moved to the East Coast, becoming professor of surgery and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. He told friends that he wanted to improve healthcare for the black community there. That same year, 1972, Kountz became chief of surgery at New York City’s Kings County Hospital Medical Center.
On a temporary teaching visit to South Africa in 1977, Kountz contracted a neurological disease that remains undisclosed to this day. Its outcome, permanent brain damage, disabled him both physically and mentally at the age of forty-two. In February 1978, he was transferred to the Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, New York. Kountz remained chronically ill thereafter until he died on December 23, 1981, at home in Kings Point, New York. A memorial service was held on December 29, 1981, at the Downstate Medical Center in New York and another at the Fine Arts Building at Arkansas AM&N College on January 19, 1982. He was buried near his home in Great Neck, New York.
Kountz wrote seventy-six professional papers and other scholarly articles. The American College of Cardiology honored him in 1964 with an Outstanding Investigator Award. UA awarded him an honorary JD degree as a distinguished alumnus, honoring his pioneering achievements in the field of kidney transplant research in 1974. In 1974, Kountz was elected president of the Society of University Surgeons as an expression of respect for his clinical and research achievements. In 1976, Kountz performed a live kidney transplant on NBC’s Today show, resulting in 20,000 persons responding with offers to donate kidneys. In April 1985, the First International Symposium on Renal Failure and Transplantation in Blacks was held and dedicated to his memory. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) gives a yearly award in his honor to an outstanding black student in the sciences.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/24/obituaries/dr-samuel-kountz-51-dies-leader-in-transplant-surgery.html
--------------------------------
Otis Boykin
African-American inventor Otis F. Boykin's work on improved electrical resistors made possible the steady workings of a variety of now-ubiquitous electronic devices. Variations of his resistor models are used around the world today in televisions, computers and radios. Most notably, however, his work enabled control functions for the first successful, implantable pacemaker.
Boykin was born in Dallas, Texas, on August 29, 1920 to parents of modest means. His mother was a homemaker and his father was a carpenter. He graduated from Fisk University in 1941 and got a job as a laboratory assistant, testing automatic aircraft controls. In 1944 he moved on to work for the P.J. Nilsen Research Labs in Illinois. Shortly thereafter, he started his own company, Boykin-Fruth Inc.
For two years, from 1946 to 1947, Boykin pursued graduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology, but unfortunately, he had to drop out when his family could no longer afford to pay tuition. Undeterred, Boykin began working hard on inventions of his own, with a special interest in the emerging field of electronics.
Boykin, while working as a consultant in Chicago, came up with several variations on the resistors that were commercially successful. A resistor is a crucial electronics component that impedes the flow of electrical current. Normally a resistor is designed to have a specific amount of resistance, depending on the type of task or device it is designated for. Typically, a resistor's value is denoted by tiny, colored bands for identification.
Boykin earned his first patent in 1959 for a wire precision resistor, which allowed for the designation of a precise amount of resistance for a specific purpose. This was followed by his 1961 patent for an electrical resistor that was inexpensive and easy to produce. Additionally, according to U.S. patent No. 2,972,726, this resistor had the ability to ìwithstand extreme accelerations and shocks and great temperature changes without danger of breakage of the fine resistance wire or other detrimental effects.î
The advances incorporated into Boykin's resistor meant many electronic devices could be made more cheaply, including consumer goods and military equipment, and with greater reliability than provided by earlier options. His resistor was quickly incorporated into a number of products, including guided missiles and IBM computers, in the United States and overseas. In addition, a version of his resistor made possible the precise regulation necessary for the success of the pacemaker, which has helped to save and lengthen the lives of thousands of men and women around the world.
Boykin's achievements lead him to work as a consultant in the United States and in Paris from 1964 to 1982. Meanwhile, he continued working on resistors until the end of his life. He created an electrical capacitor in 1965, and an electrical resistance capacitor in 1967, as well as a number of electrical resistance elements. He is also known to have created a range of consumer innovations including a burglar-proof cash register and a chemical air filter.
Boykin died of heart failure in Chicago in 1982. Over the course of his career he earned 11 patents total, his first issued in 1959, his last in 1985.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://www.biography.com/people/otis-boykin-538792
---------------------------------
Benjamin S. Carson
Synopsis
Ben Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 18, 1951. His mother, though undereducated herself, pushed her sons to read and to believe in themselves. Carson went from being a poor student to receiving honors and he eventually attended medical school. As a doctor, he became the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 33, and became famous for his ground-breaking work separating conjoined twins.
Best Known For
Ben Carson overcame his troubled youth in inner-city Detroit to become a gifted neurosurgeon famous for his work separating conjoined twins.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/facial_paralysis_pain_treatment_center/about_us/our_team/carson.html
---------------------------------
Bessie Virginia Blount
Bessie Virginia Blount lead a remarkable life that began in Hickory, Virginia, where she was born on November 24, 1914. She would go on to make significant breakthroughs in assistive technologies and forensic science, becoming a role model for women and African Americans for her pioneering work.
Young Blount moved from Virginia to New Jersey to attend Panzar College of Physical Education and later, Union Junior College. It was her goal to become a physical therapist. She completed her studies in Chicago.
She became a practicing physical therapist, and, after World War II ended, many soldiers returned from the frontlines as amputees. As part of her physical therapy work, Blount taught veterans who did not have use of their hands and feet new ways to perform basic tasks. One major challenge for people in this condition is eating. It was important to many of them to be able to feed themselves to gain a feeling of independence and self-esteem.
Blount came up with a device that that consisted of a tube that delivered individual bites of food to the patient at his or her own pace. All he or she needed to do was bite down on the tube for the next morsel to be delivered to the mouthpiece. An attached machine would deliver the next mouthful on cue. Later, while living in Newark, New Jersey, practicing physical therapy, and teaching at Bronx Hospital in New York, she also created a simpler device that employed a neck brace with built-in support for a food receptacle such as a bowl, cup or dish. For this, she received a patent under her married name, Bessie Griffin, in 1951.
Blount reportedly attempted to interest the American Veteran’s Association in these inventions, but she found it difficult to get much support, despite the devices’ potential benefit to thousands of people’s lives. She even appeared on a television show called “The Big Idea” where she demonstrated her ideas in 1953 (she was the first woman and the first African American to appear on the program). Instead, she found support in the French government, to whom she eventually donated rights to both her inventions. She was quoted as saying that she had proven "that a black woman can invent something for the benefit of humankind."
Meanwhile, Blount cultivated a reputation among the inventor community: Among her closest friends was Theodore M. Edison, son of Thomas Alva Edison, with whom she discussed many ideas and projects. She continued to innovate, creating among other things a disposable cardboard emesis basin. This she fashioned by molding and baking a mixture made of flour, water, and newspaper. Once again, the American Veteran’s Administration Hospital was disinterested; she sold the idea to Belgium, which still uses a variation of her design in its hospitals nationwide.
A second career was in store for Blount in 1969, when she began working in law enforcement, conducting forensic science research for police departments in New Jersey and Virginia. She moved up quickly, and in 1977 was sent to train and work at Scotland Yard in England. Again, she was the first African American woman to be honored with such an opportunity. Next, she is said to have applied for a job with the FBI, but was turned down. Thus she began operating her own business, using her forensic training to examine pre-civil war documents and so-called “slave” papers. She operated the business until the age of 83.
SOURCE.
-----------------------------------
Emmett Chappelle
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center retired research scientist, Emmett Chappelle, has been named one of 16 inductees for 2007 into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The honorees will be officially inducted during ceremonies on May 4-5, at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
The Hall of Fame is the nation’s preeminent center for the recognition of men and women who have worked to change the world. The recognition honors these prestigious innovators who have changed society and improve the way we live.
Chappelle, joining three other living inductees at the official announcement, was chosen for his work with Lyophilized Reaction Mixtures. His work revealed that a specific combination of chemicals caused all living organisms to emit light. Through his discovery, Chappelle facilitated important findings within the fields of biology and chemistry. In the mid-60s Chappelle work assisted in the development of instruments used to scrape Marian soil during NASA’s Viking probe mission.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Chappelle received his bachelor’s of science degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkley in 1950. After school he briefly worked as an instructor in biochemistry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN., but left to study biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. With a master’s degree, Chappelle returned to California where he served as a research associate and scientist for the Research Institute of Advanced Studies at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. He began working with NASA in 1966 in support of NASA’s manned space flight initiatives. Chappelle later relocated to Goddard Space Center to work as a remote sensing scientist.
(...)
During his 34-year Goddard career, Chappelle’s innovative research led to 14 United States patents, as well as external recognition as one of the top one hundred African Americans, scientists and engineers of the twentieth century, which has been documented in the Museum of Black Innovations & Inventions. He received many awards for his work including the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award. Chappelle produced more than 35 peer-reviewed scientific or technical publications, nearly 50 conference papers, and co-authored or edited numerous publications.
SOURCE.
-----------------------------
Valerie L. Thomas
Valerie L. Thomas was fascinated with technology as a very young child. At age eight her curiosity about how things worked inspired her to borrow a book called "The Boy's First Book On Electronics," which she took home hoping her father would help her take on some of the projects in it. After all, he liked to tinker with radios and television sets. But he did not help her.
Thomas attended an all-girls high school that did not help her, either. At the time, scientific subjects were not considered important or suitable for women. So, no one encouraged Thomas to take the advanced math classes that were offered at her school, and she continued to look up her technological aptitude as more of a curiosity than anything else.
This changed in college, when Thomas enrolled at Morgan State University as one of only two women in her class to major in physics. She was an excellent student, and soon she had acquired the knowledge of mathematics that lead her to a position as a mathematician/data analyst for NASA.
Eventually Thomas moved up within NASA and served in a position of managing the development of NASA's image-processing systems for "Landsat," the first satellite to send images from outer space. In 1976, she saw something at a scientific exhibit that would lead her down a path of invention. She saw an illusion of a glowing light bulb that had been unscrewed and removed from its socket. It had been created using a second bulb pointing downward in a socket beneath the top socket, employing a concave mirror to produce the illusion of the lit bulb. Unlike flat mirrors, which produce images that appear to be inside, or behind the mirror, concave mirrors create images that appear to be real, or in front of the mirror itself.
Thomas was intrigued, and wondered how such an image could be transmitted like other images were at the time. She began experimenting in 1977, setting up equipment to observe the relationship between an object and its real image relative to the positions of concave mirrors. She thought that if it were possible to present and transmit these types of realistic, three-dimensional images, great improvements could be made in video, and even television, in the future.
In 1980, she received a patent for her illusion transmitter, which uses a concave mirror on the transmitting end as well as on the receiving end to produce optical illusion images. NASA uses the technology today, and scientists are currently working on ways to incorporate it into tools for surgeons to look inside the human body, and possibly for television sets and video screens one day.
Thomas continued to work for NASA until her retirement in 1995, serving in such positions as Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) project manager and most recently associate chief of the Space Science Data Operations Office.
Over the course of her career Thomas contributed to computer program designs for research related to Halley's comet, ozone hole studies, and voyager satellite development. She has received a number of NASA awards including the GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) Award of Merit, and the NASA Equal Opportunity Medal. She continues to mentor young students through the National Technical Association (NTA) and Science Mathematics Aerospace Research and Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), Inc..
SOURCE.
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Charles Henry Turner
Synopsis
Born in 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Charles Henry Turner was a pioneering African-American scientist and scholar. Among his most notable achievements, Turner was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago, and the first person to discover that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience. He died in Chicago, Illinois, in 1923.
(...)
Trailblazing Research
During his career, Turner published more than 70 research papers. He pioneered research techniques in the study of animal behavior and made several important discoveries that advanced our understanding of the natural world. Among his most notable achievements, Turner was the first person to discover that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience. He showed that insects were capable of learning, illustrating (in two of his most famous research projects) that honey bees can see in color and recognize patterns. He conducted some of these experiments while working at Sumner without the benefit of research assistants or laboratory space.
SOURCE.
--------------------------------
Percy Julian
Synopsis
Born to former slaves in Alabama in 1899, pioneering chemist Percy Julian was not allowed to attend high school but went on to earn his Ph.D. His research at academic and corporate institutions led to the chemical synthesis of drugs to treat glaucoma and arthritis, and although his race presented challenges at every turn, he is regarded as one of the most influential chemists in American history.
(...)
Best Known For
African-American chemist Percy Julian was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/julian/media/lrk-whowasjulian.pdf
-------------------------------------------
James West
Synopsis
Born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, on February 10, 1931, James West attended Temple University before working for Bell Labs. Along with Gerhard M. Sessler, he developed the foil electret microphone, an inexpensive, compact device that is now used in 90 percent of all contemporary microphones. A prolific writer as well, West has more than 250 patents and became a professor at Johns Hopkins University.
(...)
Best Known For
James West is a U.S. inventor and professor who, in 1962, developed the electret transducer technology later used in 90 percent of contemporary microphones.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://afam.nts.jhu.edu/people/west/west.html
Vivien Thomas
Footprints Through Time: Vivien Thomas (1910-1985)
Vivien T. Thomas was born in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1910, the son of a carpenter. His family moved to Nashville, where Vivien graduated with honors from Pearl High School. Later in 1929 he was preparing for college and medical school when his savings for tuition disappeared following the October stock market crash. With no means for education, he took a job as a laboratory technician at Vanderbilt University's medical school, working for Dr. Alfred Blalock.
Thomas still hoped to save tuition money to earn his own medical degree, but the Great Depression worsened and the research with Blalock grew. Soon Thomas was working sixteen hours a day in the laboratory, performing operations on animals that would advance Blalock's studies of high blood pressure and traumatic shock. For his work, Thomas invented a heavy spring device that could apply varying levels of pressure. Blalock and Thomas' work at Vanderbilt created a new understanding of shock, showing that shock was linked to a loss of fluid and blood volume.
When Blalock became chief surgeon at Johns Hopkins University's medical school in 1941, he insisted that Vivien Thomas be hired to join his team there. At Johns Hopkins, Thomas and Blalock pioneered the field of heart surgery with a procedure to alleviate a congenital heart defect, the Tetralogy of Fallot ("blue baby syndrome"). Sufferers faced brutally short life expectancies. Working with cardiologist Helen Taussig, Blalock and Thomas developed an operation that would deliver more oxygen to the blood and relieve the constriction caused by the heart defect. Thomas tested the procedure -- a refinement of one that they had created in laboratory dogs -- on animals to make sure it would work. In 1944, with Thomas advising Blalock, the first "blue baby" operation was successfully performed on 15-month-old Eileen Saxon.
Thomas was a key partner in hundreds of "blue baby" operations, performing pre- and post-operation procedures on patients as well as advising in the operating room. At the same time, he continued to manage Blalock's ongoing laboratory research.
As head of the Hopkins surgical research laboratory, Thomas also taught a generation of surgeons and lab technicians. The residents and research fellows who worked with Thomas testified to his unique abilities and his dedication.
SOURCE.
Other links & references:
-http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/vthomas.htm
-http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/stlm/vtfund.html
-Kennedy DM. In search of Vivien Thomas. Texas Heart Inst J 2005; 32(4):477-8.
-----------------------------
Samuel Lee Kountz Jr.
Samuel Lee Kountz Jr. was a physician and pioneer in organ transplantation, particularly renal transplant research and surgery. An Arkansas success story, he overcame the limitations of his childhood as an African American in the Delta region of a racially segregated state to achieve national and world prominence in the medical field.
Sam Kountz was born on October 20, 1930, in Lexa (Phillips County) to the Reverend J. S. Kountz, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Emma. He was the eldest of three sons. Kountz lived in a small town with an inadequate school system in one of the most impoverished regions of the state. He attended a one-room school in Lexa until the age of fourteen, at which point he transferred to a Baptist boarding school in the same town; he later graduated from Morris Booker College High School in Dermott (Chicot County).
Kountz applied to Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (AM&N), now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), in 1948, but he failed the entrance examination. Undaunted, he applied directly to Lawrence A. Davis Sr., president of Arkansas AM&N, who was so impressed by Kountz’s ambition, his inquiring mind, and his determination to become a physician that he admitted him despite his scores. During Kountz’s senior year, he conducted a tour of the campus for Senator J. William Fulbright, who encouraged him in his goal of becoming a physician. Kountz earned a BS in chemistry in 1952, graduating third in his class.
After college, Kountz went to graduate school and earned an MS in biochemistry from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville in 1956. His MD degree was conferred in 1958 from the University of Arkansas Medical Center’s School of Medicine in Little Rock (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences). He married Grace Atkin, a teacher, on June 9, 1958, one day after his graduation from medical school. They had three children. An internship at the prestigious Stanford Service, a San Francisco hospital, followed during the next two years. He completed a rigorous surgical residency there in 1965. Two significant experiences during these years shaped Kountz’s future. The first was studying with Roy Cohn, one of the world’s pioneers in organ transplantation. The second was receiving the Giannini Fellowship in surgery that supported his postdoctoral training at the San Francisco County Hospital and his postgraduate medical studies at Hammersmith Hospital in London, England, from 1962 to 1963, where he continued his surgical training.
The apex of his achievement as a resident physician at Stanford was performing, in 1961, the first kidney transplant between a recipient and a donor who were not identical twins. This single achievement guaranteed his status as a pioneer in surgery. Throughout his career, he performed more than 500 kidney transplants. In 1965, he performed the first renal transplant in Egypt as a visiting Fulbright professor in the United Arab Republic.
After returning from overseas, Kountz was made assistant professor of surgery at Stanford University in 1966, becoming an associate professor in 1967. He was also director of the transplant service of the University of California at San Francisco until 1972. It was here that Kountz made the breakthrough observation that high doses of a steroid hormone, methylprednisolone, arrested the rejection of transplanted kidneys. This discovery led directly to the current drug regimens that make organ transplants using donations from unrelated donors routine. The years between 1967 and 1972 were his most productive. The above discovery and his advocacy of earlier re-implantation-that is, the implantation of a second kidney at the earliest signs of rejection-were his two greatest contributions to the field.
Kountz became professor of surgery and director of the transplant service at the University of California at San Francisco. The combination of an academic and a clinical appointment clearly showed the pathway he intended to follow. After five years there, Kountz moved to the East Coast, becoming professor of surgery and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. He told friends that he wanted to improve healthcare for the black community there. That same year, 1972, Kountz became chief of surgery at New York City’s Kings County Hospital Medical Center.
On a temporary teaching visit to South Africa in 1977, Kountz contracted a neurological disease that remains undisclosed to this day. Its outcome, permanent brain damage, disabled him both physically and mentally at the age of forty-two. In February 1978, he was transferred to the Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, New York. Kountz remained chronically ill thereafter until he died on December 23, 1981, at home in Kings Point, New York. A memorial service was held on December 29, 1981, at the Downstate Medical Center in New York and another at the Fine Arts Building at Arkansas AM&N College on January 19, 1982. He was buried near his home in Great Neck, New York.
Kountz wrote seventy-six professional papers and other scholarly articles. The American College of Cardiology honored him in 1964 with an Outstanding Investigator Award. UA awarded him an honorary JD degree as a distinguished alumnus, honoring his pioneering achievements in the field of kidney transplant research in 1974. In 1974, Kountz was elected president of the Society of University Surgeons as an expression of respect for his clinical and research achievements. In 1976, Kountz performed a live kidney transplant on NBC’s Today show, resulting in 20,000 persons responding with offers to donate kidneys. In April 1985, the First International Symposium on Renal Failure and Transplantation in Blacks was held and dedicated to his memory. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) gives a yearly award in his honor to an outstanding black student in the sciences.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/24/obituaries/dr-samuel-kountz-51-dies-leader-in-transplant-surgery.html
--------------------------------
Otis Boykin
African-American inventor Otis F. Boykin's work on improved electrical resistors made possible the steady workings of a variety of now-ubiquitous electronic devices. Variations of his resistor models are used around the world today in televisions, computers and radios. Most notably, however, his work enabled control functions for the first successful, implantable pacemaker.
Boykin was born in Dallas, Texas, on August 29, 1920 to parents of modest means. His mother was a homemaker and his father was a carpenter. He graduated from Fisk University in 1941 and got a job as a laboratory assistant, testing automatic aircraft controls. In 1944 he moved on to work for the P.J. Nilsen Research Labs in Illinois. Shortly thereafter, he started his own company, Boykin-Fruth Inc.
For two years, from 1946 to 1947, Boykin pursued graduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology, but unfortunately, he had to drop out when his family could no longer afford to pay tuition. Undeterred, Boykin began working hard on inventions of his own, with a special interest in the emerging field of electronics.
Boykin, while working as a consultant in Chicago, came up with several variations on the resistors that were commercially successful. A resistor is a crucial electronics component that impedes the flow of electrical current. Normally a resistor is designed to have a specific amount of resistance, depending on the type of task or device it is designated for. Typically, a resistor's value is denoted by tiny, colored bands for identification.
Boykin earned his first patent in 1959 for a wire precision resistor, which allowed for the designation of a precise amount of resistance for a specific purpose. This was followed by his 1961 patent for an electrical resistor that was inexpensive and easy to produce. Additionally, according to U.S. patent No. 2,972,726, this resistor had the ability to ìwithstand extreme accelerations and shocks and great temperature changes without danger of breakage of the fine resistance wire or other detrimental effects.î
The advances incorporated into Boykin's resistor meant many electronic devices could be made more cheaply, including consumer goods and military equipment, and with greater reliability than provided by earlier options. His resistor was quickly incorporated into a number of products, including guided missiles and IBM computers, in the United States and overseas. In addition, a version of his resistor made possible the precise regulation necessary for the success of the pacemaker, which has helped to save and lengthen the lives of thousands of men and women around the world.
Boykin's achievements lead him to work as a consultant in the United States and in Paris from 1964 to 1982. Meanwhile, he continued working on resistors until the end of his life. He created an electrical capacitor in 1965, and an electrical resistance capacitor in 1967, as well as a number of electrical resistance elements. He is also known to have created a range of consumer innovations including a burglar-proof cash register and a chemical air filter.
Boykin died of heart failure in Chicago in 1982. Over the course of his career he earned 11 patents total, his first issued in 1959, his last in 1985.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://www.biography.com/people/otis-boykin-538792
---------------------------------
Benjamin S. Carson
Synopsis
Ben Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 18, 1951. His mother, though undereducated herself, pushed her sons to read and to believe in themselves. Carson went from being a poor student to receiving honors and he eventually attended medical school. As a doctor, he became the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 33, and became famous for his ground-breaking work separating conjoined twins.
Best Known For
Ben Carson overcame his troubled youth in inner-city Detroit to become a gifted neurosurgeon famous for his work separating conjoined twins.
SOURCE.
Other links:
-http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/facial_paralysis_pain_treatment_center/about_us/our_team/carson.html
---------------------------------
Bessie Virginia Blount
Bessie Virginia Blount lead a remarkable life that began in Hickory, Virginia, where she was born on November 24, 1914. She would go on to make significant breakthroughs in assistive technologies and forensic science, becoming a role model for women and African Americans for her pioneering work.
Young Blount moved from Virginia to New Jersey to attend Panzar College of Physical Education and later, Union Junior College. It was her goal to become a physical therapist. She completed her studies in Chicago.
She became a practicing physical therapist, and, after World War II ended, many soldiers returned from the frontlines as amputees. As part of her physical therapy work, Blount taught veterans who did not have use of their hands and feet new ways to perform basic tasks. One major challenge for people in this condition is eating. It was important to many of them to be able to feed themselves to gain a feeling of independence and self-esteem.
Blount came up with a device that that consisted of a tube that delivered individual bites of food to the patient at his or her own pace. All he or she needed to do was bite down on the tube for the next morsel to be delivered to the mouthpiece. An attached machine would deliver the next mouthful on cue. Later, while living in Newark, New Jersey, practicing physical therapy, and teaching at Bronx Hospital in New York, she also created a simpler device that employed a neck brace with built-in support for a food receptacle such as a bowl, cup or dish. For this, she received a patent under her married name, Bessie Griffin, in 1951.
Blount reportedly attempted to interest the American Veteran’s Association in these inventions, but she found it difficult to get much support, despite the devices’ potential benefit to thousands of people’s lives. She even appeared on a television show called “The Big Idea” where she demonstrated her ideas in 1953 (she was the first woman and the first African American to appear on the program). Instead, she found support in the French government, to whom she eventually donated rights to both her inventions. She was quoted as saying that she had proven "that a black woman can invent something for the benefit of humankind."
Meanwhile, Blount cultivated a reputation among the inventor community: Among her closest friends was Theodore M. Edison, son of Thomas Alva Edison, with whom she discussed many ideas and projects. She continued to innovate, creating among other things a disposable cardboard emesis basin. This she fashioned by molding and baking a mixture made of flour, water, and newspaper. Once again, the American Veteran’s Administration Hospital was disinterested; she sold the idea to Belgium, which still uses a variation of her design in its hospitals nationwide.
A second career was in store for Blount in 1969, when she began working in law enforcement, conducting forensic science research for police departments in New Jersey and Virginia. She moved up quickly, and in 1977 was sent to train and work at Scotland Yard in England. Again, she was the first African American woman to be honored with such an opportunity. Next, she is said to have applied for a job with the FBI, but was turned down. Thus she began operating her own business, using her forensic training to examine pre-civil war documents and so-called “slave” papers. She operated the business until the age of 83.
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Emmett Chappelle
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center retired research scientist, Emmett Chappelle, has been named one of 16 inductees for 2007 into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The honorees will be officially inducted during ceremonies on May 4-5, at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
The Hall of Fame is the nation’s preeminent center for the recognition of men and women who have worked to change the world. The recognition honors these prestigious innovators who have changed society and improve the way we live.
Chappelle, joining three other living inductees at the official announcement, was chosen for his work with Lyophilized Reaction Mixtures. His work revealed that a specific combination of chemicals caused all living organisms to emit light. Through his discovery, Chappelle facilitated important findings within the fields of biology and chemistry. In the mid-60s Chappelle work assisted in the development of instruments used to scrape Marian soil during NASA’s Viking probe mission.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Chappelle received his bachelor’s of science degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkley in 1950. After school he briefly worked as an instructor in biochemistry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN., but left to study biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. With a master’s degree, Chappelle returned to California where he served as a research associate and scientist for the Research Institute of Advanced Studies at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. He began working with NASA in 1966 in support of NASA’s manned space flight initiatives. Chappelle later relocated to Goddard Space Center to work as a remote sensing scientist.
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During his 34-year Goddard career, Chappelle’s innovative research led to 14 United States patents, as well as external recognition as one of the top one hundred African Americans, scientists and engineers of the twentieth century, which has been documented in the Museum of Black Innovations & Inventions. He received many awards for his work including the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award. Chappelle produced more than 35 peer-reviewed scientific or technical publications, nearly 50 conference papers, and co-authored or edited numerous publications.
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Valerie L. Thomas
Valerie L. Thomas was fascinated with technology as a very young child. At age eight her curiosity about how things worked inspired her to borrow a book called "The Boy's First Book On Electronics," which she took home hoping her father would help her take on some of the projects in it. After all, he liked to tinker with radios and television sets. But he did not help her.
Thomas attended an all-girls high school that did not help her, either. At the time, scientific subjects were not considered important or suitable for women. So, no one encouraged Thomas to take the advanced math classes that were offered at her school, and she continued to look up her technological aptitude as more of a curiosity than anything else.
This changed in college, when Thomas enrolled at Morgan State University as one of only two women in her class to major in physics. She was an excellent student, and soon she had acquired the knowledge of mathematics that lead her to a position as a mathematician/data analyst for NASA.
Eventually Thomas moved up within NASA and served in a position of managing the development of NASA's image-processing systems for "Landsat," the first satellite to send images from outer space. In 1976, she saw something at a scientific exhibit that would lead her down a path of invention. She saw an illusion of a glowing light bulb that had been unscrewed and removed from its socket. It had been created using a second bulb pointing downward in a socket beneath the top socket, employing a concave mirror to produce the illusion of the lit bulb. Unlike flat mirrors, which produce images that appear to be inside, or behind the mirror, concave mirrors create images that appear to be real, or in front of the mirror itself.
Thomas was intrigued, and wondered how such an image could be transmitted like other images were at the time. She began experimenting in 1977, setting up equipment to observe the relationship between an object and its real image relative to the positions of concave mirrors. She thought that if it were possible to present and transmit these types of realistic, three-dimensional images, great improvements could be made in video, and even television, in the future.
In 1980, she received a patent for her illusion transmitter, which uses a concave mirror on the transmitting end as well as on the receiving end to produce optical illusion images. NASA uses the technology today, and scientists are currently working on ways to incorporate it into tools for surgeons to look inside the human body, and possibly for television sets and video screens one day.
Thomas continued to work for NASA until her retirement in 1995, serving in such positions as Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) project manager and most recently associate chief of the Space Science Data Operations Office.
Over the course of her career Thomas contributed to computer program designs for research related to Halley's comet, ozone hole studies, and voyager satellite development. She has received a number of NASA awards including the GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) Award of Merit, and the NASA Equal Opportunity Medal. She continues to mentor young students through the National Technical Association (NTA) and Science Mathematics Aerospace Research and Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), Inc..
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Charles Henry Turner
Synopsis
Born in 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Charles Henry Turner was a pioneering African-American scientist and scholar. Among his most notable achievements, Turner was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago, and the first person to discover that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience. He died in Chicago, Illinois, in 1923.
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Trailblazing Research
During his career, Turner published more than 70 research papers. He pioneered research techniques in the study of animal behavior and made several important discoveries that advanced our understanding of the natural world. Among his most notable achievements, Turner was the first person to discover that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience. He showed that insects were capable of learning, illustrating (in two of his most famous research projects) that honey bees can see in color and recognize patterns. He conducted some of these experiments while working at Sumner without the benefit of research assistants or laboratory space.
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Percy Julian
Synopsis
Born to former slaves in Alabama in 1899, pioneering chemist Percy Julian was not allowed to attend high school but went on to earn his Ph.D. His research at academic and corporate institutions led to the chemical synthesis of drugs to treat glaucoma and arthritis, and although his race presented challenges at every turn, he is regarded as one of the most influential chemists in American history.
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Best Known For
African-American chemist Percy Julian was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills.
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Other links:
-http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/julian/media/lrk-whowasjulian.pdf
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James West
Synopsis
Born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, on February 10, 1931, James West attended Temple University before working for Bell Labs. Along with Gerhard M. Sessler, he developed the foil electret microphone, an inexpensive, compact device that is now used in 90 percent of all contemporary microphones. A prolific writer as well, West has more than 250 patents and became a professor at Johns Hopkins University.
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Best Known For
James West is a U.S. inventor and professor who, in 1962, developed the electret transducer technology later used in 90 percent of contemporary microphones.
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Other links:
-http://afam.nts.jhu.edu/people/west/west.html