Aerospace engineer and military officer Renaldo M. Jensen (1940 – ) was one of the first two African Americans to earn their M.S. degrees in aerospace engineering from the United States Air Force School of Technology at Dayton’s Wright Patterson Air Force Base. During the course of his career, Jensen worked with the United States Air Force, Howard University,...

Mechanical engineer and engineering professor James Edward Hubbard, Jr. was born on December 21, 1951 in Danville, Virginia. Hubbard received his high school diploma with a concentration in engineering in 1969 from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. In 1971, he enlisted as an officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine and served during the Vietnam War. He attended the Calhoon MEBA...

Inventor and chemical engineer, Joycelyn Harrison was born in 1964. She received her B.S. in chemistry from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1987. She then went on later that year to earn her B.S. in chemical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. Harrison remained at Georgia Tech as a graduate student and completed her M.S. in chemical engineering...

Aerospace engineer Wesley L. Harris was born in Richmond, Virginia on October 29, 1 941. His parents, William Harris and Rosa Harris, worked in Richmond’s tobacco factories. As a child, Harris was intrigued by airplanes and learned to build different models. In the fourth grade, he won an essay contest about career goals with a paper on how he...

Chemical engineer and engineering professor Paula Therese Hammond was born in 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. Although she grew up wanting to become a writer, Hammond changed her mind after taking a junior high school chemistry class. She was hooked by the idea of using two materials to create a something completely different. After graduating from high school, Hammond attended...

Professor of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering Sossina Haile was born on July 28, 1966 in Ethiopia. After her family left Africa during an uprising in the 1970s, Haile grew up in Minnesota. She attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she received her B.S. degree in 1986. She went on to receive her M.S. degree from the University...

Agricultural engineer Essex E. Finney was born in Powhatan County, Virginia on May 16, 1937. As a child, he worked on his family farm growing tobacco, wheat and corn as well as raising farm animals. Finney became interested in agricultural engineering when his family acquired a tractor. After graduating from Pocahontas High School in 1954, he enrolled at Virginia...

Engineer Robert Sherwood Dorsey was born on October 9, 1293 in Lafayette, Louisiana. The son of Rita Starling Allen and Willie Dorsey, he graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas. Enrolling in Prairie View College in 1941, Dorsey volunteered for the U.S. Army Reserves and studied engineering. Drafted into the segregated U.S. Army, Dorsey served in the...

Research scientist Peter J. Delfyett was born on March 8, 1959 in Queens, New York. He received his B.E. (E.E.) degree from the City College of New York in 1981 and his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester in 1983. Delfyett then returned to the City University of New York and went on to graduate...

Aerospace engineer and mathematician Christine M. Darden was born on September 10, 1942 in Monroe, North Carolina. Darden was the youngest of five children born to Noah Horace Sr., an insurance agent, and Desma Chaney Mann, an elementary school teacher. Darden attended Winchester Avenue High School and then transferred to Allen High School, a Methodist boarding school (formerly the...