Black History Month Essays due Feb. 15

When most people think of the word "scientist" the image which comes to mind is not usually of a woman, an African American or a Latino. There are actually many notable scientists who aren't white men.

For those of you who want to enter the Black History Essay competition, I urge you to think about writing about a great African American scientist.

Take a look at the following links to explore more about some of these amazing people who make our world a better place.

Percy Julian
Percy Julian was a great African American scientist with ties to Chicago.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/julian/
The official PBS Nova Percy Julian page. You can watch the show online, find out facts about Julian, and find links to other sites with information about Percy Julian.
http://www.pbs.org/previews/nova_forgottengenius/
The PBS NOVA preview page with a good summary of the Forgotten Genius show about Percy Julian

Sites about Vivian Theodore Thomas, the African American carpenter (yes, carpenter) who first figured out how to do open heart surgery.
https://webfiles.uci.edu/mcbrown/display/thomas.html
http://medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/vthomas.htm

Info about the HBO movie about Vivian Thomas staring Mos Def – Rent the movie and see if you want to write about this amazing innovator.
http://www.flixster.com/movie/something-the-lord-made


The website and video page of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist in the NOVA movies about the formation of the Earth we watched in biology.
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/watch

Website with listing of many African American scientists
http://www.black-scientists.com/home


Black History Month website about African American inventors
http://inventors.about.com/od/blackinventors/u/BlackHistoryMonth.htm


The Faces of Science – a university site highlighting African American scientists
https://webfiles.uci.edu/mcbrown/display/faces.html

Site listing notable African American physicists
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/physics/physics-peeps.html

Site listing notable African American astronomers and astrophysicists.
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/physics/astronomy-peeps.html#AST%20PEEPS