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...

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...

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...

Elementary school teacher and engineer James Collier was born on October 18, 1924 in Jackson, Tennessee to Lucille and James Collier, Sr. Collier’s grandmother ran a boarding house for Pullman porters, and his maternal great grandmother lived to be 111 years old. A retired quality control engineer for Monsanto, Collier is the inventor of the process by which Monsanto...

Engineer and airplane pilot Alfred Brothers (1942 – ) served for twenty-two years as an officer in the United States Air Force as a pilot and a wing commander of the Air Force ROTC before working as an engineer program manager for Magnavox, now Raytheon Systems. Link: http://www.idvl.org/sciencemakers/Bio2.html

Mechanical engineer and civic leader Gwendolyn Elizabeth Boyd was born on December 27, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama to Dora McClain. Boyd’s mother passed away when Boyd was thirteen years old, and her godmother, Emzella Mapson, raised her. Boyd’s teachers, at the all-black McDavid Elementary School, nurtured her love of math from a young age. Boyd was one of five...

Aerospace engineer and major general (ret) Charles F. Bolden, Jr. was born on August 19, 1946 in Columbia, South Carolina. He graduated from C.A. Johnson High School in 1964. Both of his parents, Charles and Ethel Bolden, were teachers and stressed the importance of education. Bolden received his B.S. degree in electrical science from the U.S. Naval Academy in...

Electrical engineer and physicist Clayton W. Bates (1932 – ) worked for several engineering and scientific companies including Varian Associates, AVCO, Sylvania Electric Products, the Ford Instrument Company, and RCA. His projects ranged from low-level light detection and x-ray image intensification to the design of the nuclear reactor controls of the first SEA WOLF, the second atomic powered submarine....

Corporate executive and computer engineer Rodney Adkins was born on August 23, 1958, in Miami, Florida, to Archie and Wauneta Adkins. He attended Miami Jackson High School where he graduated in 1976 as valedictorian. In 1981, Adkins graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with his B.S. degree in electrical engineering. He then received his B.A. degree in physics...