Mary Golda Ross was the great-granddaughter of a Cherokee chief and grew up in the Cherokee Nation with her grandparents. After completing college and earning a master’s degree, Ross accepted a position working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. After World War II broke out, Ross moved to California and was hired at the prestigious engineering firm Lockheed Martin. While at Lockheed, she helped calculate and design how to overcome forces to get manned and unmanned objects into orbit. This preliminary work was foundational for eventually sending Americans into space and to the Moon.

Before digital computers were created, mathematical problems were calculated by the hands of human computers. Katherine Johnson was one of the computers who hand calculated the trajectories that led American astronauts first into space. She had to account for a multitude of changing force and motion variables to calculate precise entry and exit angles. As an African-American woman working in the 1950s, Johnson faced racism and sexism on a daily basis. However, she was such a brilliant mathematician that Astronaut John Glenn personally requested she calculate the numbers before he agreed to be launched into orbit. Katherine Johnson’s story was depicted in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.

In 1876 Edward Alexander Bouchet made history by becoming the first African American PhD physicist, and the sixth person of any race to receive a PhD in physics from an American university. Bouchet went on to educate and inspire others as a science teacher at a school for black students.

Edward Bouchet was born in September 1852, in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, a freed slave, worked as an unskilled laborer, like many black men in the town. His mother was a housewife, and he had three older sisters. The Bouchet family was active with their local church and the local abolitionist movement, and encouraged all the children to get an education.

The local public schools were segregated, so in elementary school Edward Bouchet attended the Artisan Street Colored School, which had 30 students of all grade levels, and one teacher. In 1868 he gained admittance to Hopkins Grammar School, a prestigious private preparatory school that sent its graduates to Yale College. At Hopkins Grammar School he received a classical education, studying Latin and Greek as well as geometry, algebra and history. Bouchet graduated first in his class in 1870. Learn More ...

source : https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200706/history.cfm

Physicist and physics professor Sylvester James Gates, Jr. was born on December 15, 1950 in Tampa, Florida to Charlie Engels and Sylvester James Gates, Sr. His father worked for the U.S. Army, causing the family to move many times. Gates had lived in six cities by the time he reached the sixth grade. His parents always stressed the importance of education and his father bought him a Encyclopedia Britannica set when he was just eight years old, sparking his interest in science. Gates graduated from High School in 1969. With the encouragement of his father, Gates applied and was admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned his B.S. degrees in mathematics and physics in 1973. Gates remained at MIT for four more years, earning his Ph.D. degree in physics in 1977. His thesis, “Symmetry Principles in Selected Problems of Field Theory,” was the first at MIT to deal with supersymmetry.

In 1977, Gates went on to attend Harvard University as a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. He remained at Harvard until 1980, when he moved to California to work as a research fellow with the California Institute of Technology. In 1982, Gates accepted a position as an assistant professor of applied mathematics at MIT. During this time, he also served as director of the Office of Minority Education. Gates joined the University of Maryland as an associate professor of physics in 1984, and became a full professor in 1988. He briefly served as a professor of physics at Howard University from 1990-1993, before returning to teach exclusively at the University of Maryland in 1994. While at Howard, Gates served as the director of the Center for the Study of Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Atmospheres. In 1998, Gates was named the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, becoming the first African American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major research university in the United States.

Gates’s work in mathematics and theoretical physics has greatly contributed to knowledge about supersymmetry, supergravity and string theory. He has written or co-written over 120 research papers and articles. Working with M.T. Gisaru, M. Rocek, and W. Siegel, Gates co-authored Superspace or 1001 Lessons in Supersymmetry, a standard textbook on the topic of supersymmetry. Gates received numerous honors and awards, including being the first recipient of the American Physical Society’s Edward A. Bouchet Award. In 2009, President Barack Obama named Gates a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In addition to his research, Gates is known for advocating the importance of education and being able to easily explain complex physics theories to a non-physics audience.

Source: https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/sylvester-james-gates-jr