Dr. Patricia Bath was born in Harlem, New York. In 1959, she was selected from a vast number of students across the country for a summer program at Yeshiva University sponsored by the National Science Foundation. While only sixteen years old, she worked in the field of cancer research and developed a mathematical equation that could be used to predict the growth of cancerous tumors. She was presented with the 1960 Mademoiselle Magazine Merit Award. It only took her 2 ½ years to graduate from high school.

In 1964, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College in New York. She then enrolled in medical school at Howard University in Washington, DC. She worked internationally while in medical school and graduated, with honors, in 1968.

After earning her doctorate, she moved back to New York to serve as an intern at Harlem Hospital and accepted a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University. While working in these two very different environments, she discovered blacks were twice as likely to suffer blindness than whites and that blacks were eight times more likely to suffer blindness from glaucoma than whites. As a result, she promoted the concept of Community Ophthalmology, an outreach program to serve the poor for glaucoma and cataracts screening.

In 1973, she became the first black person to complete a residency in ophthalmology. She moved to California and became a faculty member at UCLA and the Charles R. Drew University. In 1976, she co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness based on the principle that "eyesight is a basic human right." In 1983, she co-founded and chaired the Ophthalmology Residency Training Program and became the first woman in the country to hold such a position.

In 1981, she invented a device called a "Laserphaco Probe" which would vaporize the cataracts in the eye within a matter of minutes rather than drilling into the eye and scraping out the cataracts as was common practice. She went on to hold three other patents on medical devices, her latest in 2000. She is the first African-American woman to receive medical patents in history.

Patricia Bath passed away in 2019 at the age of 76. She was an American pioneer in the field of ophthalmology. Her work has helped improve the lives of millions of people around the world. Her contributions to medicine have made her a great American.

Saint Elmo Brady was born in 1884 in Louisville, Kentucky. Brady excelled in high school and graduated with honors. He attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and became a student of Thomas W. Talley, a pioneering African-American teacher of science. Brady earned his bachelor’s degree in 1908 and began teaching at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. There, he was mentored by Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.

In 1912, he began his graduate studies at the University of Illinois in chemistry, earning his master’s degree by 1914. Brady did research on the characterization of organic acids. He was able to get three abstracts published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal “Science.” By 1916, Brady became the first African-American in history to earn his doctorate in chemistry. He also became the first African-American admitted into Phi Lambda Upsilon, the university’s chemical honor society. He was also one of the first African-Americans inducted into Sigma Xi, the science honorary society.

Brady returned to teach at Tuskegee for four years before being asked to serve as chair of the Department of Chemistry at Howard University in Washington, DC. While at Howard, he did collaborative work with the University of Illinois on infrared spectroscopy. He also worked with Dr. Samuel Massie, the first African-American faculty member of the United States Naval Academy, on research concerning the synthesis of a halogen compound. This was significant work because halogen compounds were being used as insecticides.

In 1927, his former professor, Dr. Talley, announced his retirement and Brady took the opportunity to become the chair of the chemistry department at Fisk University. Brady taught there for 25 years and developed an undergraduate curriculum for chemistry. He founded the first-ever graduate chemistry program at an all-black college in the United States. Brady retired in 1952, but continued working in collaboration with several black universities. He died in 1966 in Washington, DC, but his legacy as a pioneering chemist lives on. Brady was truly a Great American.