Chemist, city council member, and patent attorney Esther Arvilla Harrison Hopkins was born in 1926 in Stamford, Connecticut. Working as household servants, Hopkins’s parents encouraged her and her siblings to pursue their education. In 1947, Hopkins graduated from Boston University with her B.A. degree in chemistry. Just two years later, she obtained her M.S. degree in chemistry from Howard...

Biochemist Sharon Haynie was born on November 6, 1955 in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from Baltimore City Public Schools in 1973 and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. During her undergraduate years, she became fascinated with biochemistry and advanced inorganic chemistry. In her freshman year she was a work/study research assistant to a graduate student in organic chemistry. After...

Chemist and academic administrator John Hall (1946 – ) was a leading researcher in atmospheric chemistry, particularly the reactions occurring to deplete the ozone layer. Hall is the Chair of the chemistry department at Morehouse College. Link: http://www.idvl.org/sciencemakers/Bio30.html

Research chemist and research manager Joseph Grover Gordon, II, was born on December 25, 1945 in Nashville, Tennessee to Joseph Grover, Sr. Juanita Elizabeth (Tarlton) Gordon. He is one of four children, including Eric Rodney, Craig Stephen, and Rhea Juanita. After briefly attending Atkins High School in North Carolina, Gordon went on to graduate from the prestigious Phillips Exeter...

Chemist and chemistry professor Ralph Gardner-Chavis was born on December 3, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio to Vivian Hicks Gardner, a teacher and housewife, and Clarence Chavis Gardner, a musician and government worker. Gardner-Chavis was educated in the Cleveland Public School system. He attended Bolton Elementary School and Audubon Junior High School. Gardner-Chavis graduated from John Adams High School in...

Chemist and chemistry professor Krishna L. Foster was born on January 7, 1970 in Culver City, California to parents Warren Foster and Frances Smith Foster. Her father, a sales representative for International Business Machines (IBM), and her mother, a professor of English and women’s studies, encouraged Foster and her brother to excel in school. Foster graduated from Helix High...

Organic chemist and chemistry professor Fillmore Freeman was born in 1936 in Lexington, Mississippi. Freeman earned his high school diploma from John Marshall High School in Chicago, Illinois in 1953. In 1957, he graduated summa cum laude from Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, with his B.S. degree, and then went on to pursue his graduate studies at Michigan...

Chemist and chemistry professor Lloyd N. Ferguson (1918 – ) earned his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from University of California, Berkeley in 1943, making him the first African American to do so. He was instrumental in building the doctoral program in chemistry at Howard University, the first of its kind at any historically black college or university and later...

Chemist and chemistry professor Billy Joe Evans was born on August 18, 1942 in Macon, Georgia. Evans grew up amidst the racism and segregation policies of the south during the 1950s. Evans’ father, Will Evans, worked part-time as a coordinator for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and went to Washington, D.C. to confer and strategize with founder and...

Organic chemist and inventor Linnaeus Dorman was born on June 28, 1935 in Orangeburg, South Carolina to schoolteachers John Albert Dorman, Sr. and Georgia Hammond. He and his twin brother, James are the youngest of five siblings. Raised in the Jim Crow South, his parents sent him to the historically black South Carolina State College laboratory school. The state...