BLACK PIONEERS OF SCIENCE AND INVENTION

by Louis Haber ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1970

Well, Goddammit, it's high time you learned to call a doctor a doctor,"" says Dr. Louis T. Wright, countering a white man's ""Sam"" by calling him ""Charlie."" Introduced here along with Wright, a surgical trailblazer with broad interests (he was the first to try Aureomycin on humans), are thirteen others who merited more respect and recognition than they received. Dr. Everett Just, the marine biology expert who demonstrated that the cell nucleus is not alone responsible for heredity, that the cytoplasm and especially the ectoplasm influence its structure and function, was vouchsafed only summers at Woods Hole for his research; ""He properly belongs in an institution like the Rockefeller Institute,"" stated one colleague, ""but the Rockefeller Foundation. . . could not summon enough courage to solve an interracial problem."" The book does not merely decry injustice, it communicates the interest of each field of study, conveys the significance of the work of each in the field--""a doctor is a doctor"" whether it's Norbert Rillieux revolutionizing the world's sugar industry by invention of the vacuum-pan evaporator; Elijah ""the real McCoy"" making lubrication automatic, shutting down unnecessary; electrical system pioneers Granville Woods (for railways, overhead conduction, underneath ""the third rail"") and Lewis Latimer (incandescent lamps in parallel circuit to light up New York). Better known but nowhere better summ(on)ed up are Benjamin Banneker, Jan Matzeliger (ironically, to the shoe industry his invention is the ""Nigger Head"" machine), George Washington Carver and Charles Drew. Then there's the still preeminently productive Percy Julian, recently active food chemist Lloyd A. Hall, Garrett A. Morgan whose Safety Hood to protect firemen and others from smoke, dust and fumes became the gas mask, and Daniel Hale Williams, the first to enter the chest cavity and ""sew up the heart."" An auspicious roster, creative, eloquently black, mostly self-educated--worth knowing equally for themselves and for their work. (And buttressed by personal interviews and citations of research studies as well as whatever will appear in the promised bibliography.)

Pub Date: May 1, 1970

ISBN: 0152085661

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION