Segregation may have hindered James Bowman from pursuing his dream of becoming an Army medical officer, but it didn’t stop the trailblazer from forging his own path in medicine and genetics despite the many obstacles erected by a racist society.

A 1943 biology graduate of Howard University, Bowman stayed remained at the university to secure his medical degree as part of the of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He later interned at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. and completed his residency in pathology at Chicago’s St. Luke’s Hospital from 1947 to 1952.

Always one to continually expand his knowledge base through research, Bowman moved to Iran in 1955 to study G6PD deficiency, a rare genetic disorder also known as favism, that is linked to episodes of anemia and affects one in ten African American men. After successfully diagnosing an Iranian patient with the condition, he took his penchant for research and scientific rigor around the world. From 1961 to 1962, Bowman studied genetics at the Galton Laboratory at University College London and then later settled at the University of Chicago, where his scientific work took him to Uganda, Mexico, Ghana and other nations.

Eventually publishing more than 90 scholarly papers on human genetics, Bowman was also a fierce advocate for African-Americans. He was instrumental in ensuring that governmental and medical institutions considered bioethics and consent when testing on historically marginalized populations.

Source: https://blog.23andme.com/news/african-american-scientists

Dr. Patricia Nez Henderson, a member of the Navajo Nation, was the first American Indian woman to graduate from Yale University School of Medicine and is an important scientist in the field of public health. Dr. Nez Henderson was honored upon graduation with the inaugural Patricia Nez Award developed to recognize graduates committed to improving the health of American Indians. Dr. Nez Henderson serves as vice president for the Black Hills Center for American Indian Health, an American Indian nonprofit organization established in 1998 to address the various health needs of Northern Plains tribes. Dr. Nez Henderson has devoted much of her career to studying the effects of nicotine on Native Americans from a genetic viewpoint, as well as to developing culturally relevant tools for smoking cessation.

source: https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_147.html