Black History Month: Pioneers in Science and Technology

In honor of Black History Month, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) is spotlighting early pioneers in science and technology. Against a backdrop of legalized discrimination, these visionaries led significant advances in the fields of science and technology, courageously breaking barriers and challenging stereotypes. ICS celebrates their ground-breaking success and hopes these stories help inspire the next generation of leadership and innovation!

Dorothy Vaughan

Born in 1910, Dorothy Vaughan was 15 when she was named high school valedictorian. She earned a B.S. in mathematics from Wilberforce University and was a high school math teacher before starting work at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor to NASA) in 1943. She was a “computer” at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in the segregated West Area Computing Unit. In 1949, she became NACA’s first Black supervisor, tirelessly advocating for the women she led. Before retiring in 1971, she became an expert FORTRAN programmer and contributed to the Scout Launch Vehicle Program. She died Nov. 10, 2008.

Katherine Johnson

Born in West Virginia in 1918, Katherine Johnson excelled in math as a child and started high school at age 13. In 1939, she was one of three Black students to attend West Virginia’s graduate schools, and in 1953, she was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor to NASA. She worked there for 35 years as an aerospace technologist, performing calculations for U.S. spaceflights, including for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and for John Glenn’s orbit around Earth. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award. She passed away in 2020 at age 101.

David Harold Blackwell

David Harold Blackwell, born in 1919, was an American statistician and mathematician who made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and statistics. Growing up in a working-class family in Centralia, Illinois, he attended “mixed” schools and distinguished himself in mathematics. He went on to earn his Ph.D., focusing his dissertation on Markov chains. In 1965, he became the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He died in 2010 at the age of 91, and in 2012, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded him the National Medal of Science.

Mary Winston Jackson

If you’ve seen the movie “Hidden Figures,” you know Mary Winston Jackson, along with her supervisor Dorothy Vaughan and colleague Katherine Johnson. Born in 1921, Jackson started working as a “computer” at the Langley Research Center at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (predecessor to NASA) in 1951. After receiving special approval to enroll in advanced engineering classes at a segregated school, she became NASA’s first Black female engineer in 1958. In 1979, she became manager of Langley’s Federal Women’s Program, hiring and promoting female mathematicians, engineers and scientists. She died in 2005 at the age of 83.

Evelyn Boyd Granville

“I always smile when I hear that women cannot excel in mathematics,” Evelyn Boyd Granville once said. Born in 1924, Granville became the second Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics when she graduated from Yale University 1949 (the first was Euphemia Lofton Haynes). Granville went on to become a computer scientist for IBM, working on the Vanguard satellite project and Mercury spacecraft program. She also worked at U.S. Space Technologies Laboratories before becoming a professor of mathematics. In 2019, she was recognized by Mathematically Gifted & Black (MGB) as a Black History Month Honoree. She died in 2023 at the age of 99.

Roy Clay

Known as “the Godfather of Silicon Valley,” tech pioneer Roy Clay was born in Missouri in 1929 and was one of the first African Americans to graduate from St. Louis University. While working at Hewlett Packard, he helped develop the first HP minicomputer. He also expanded recruitment, hiring five Black engineers into the computer division. As the first African-American to serve on the Palo Alto City Council, he worked to give others the same opportunities he had. He later founded Rod-L Electronics, which tests for safety in electrical equipment. He was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council’s Hall of Fame in 2003. He died in Sept. 2024.

Gladys West

Born in 1930, Gladys West grew up on a farm. Thanks to a scholarship, she attended Virginia State College, where she eventually earned a master’s degree in mathematics. When she started working at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, she was only the second Black woman to be hired to work as a programmer at the base. Her work to invent an accurate model of the Earth laid the groundwork for the creation of the Global Positioning System (GPS). She was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018.

Annie J. Easley

Annie J. Easley was born in 1933 in Birmingham, Alabama and was raised by a single mom. Like Katherine Johnson, she worked at NACA and NASA. She was a computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist, and her 34-year career included developing and implementing computer code that analyzed alternative power technologies. She also served as an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) counselor, helping address discrimination complaints at NASA. She was interviewed in 2001 as part of the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. She passed away in 2011.

Jerry Lawson

The inventor of interchangeable gaming cartridges, Jerry Lawson, was born in Queens, New York in 1940. His interest in engineering led him to repair TVs as a teen, and after attending college, he worked at several tech companies before joining Fairchild Semiconductor. There, he created the first video game console with interchangeable cartridges, paving the way for the future of gaming. He later founded his own video game company, VideoSoft. Just before he passed away in 2011, he was honored as an industry pioneer by the International Game Developers Association.

Clarence “Skip” Ellis

Born in 1943, Clarence “Skip” Ellis became the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in computer science. Ellis grew up in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. His interest in computers was sparked at age 15 when he worked as a night-shift operator at a manufacturing firm. While protecting against break-ins, he studied the computer manuals. After earning his Ph.D., he worked at Xerox PARC, where he pioneered Officetalk, a collaborative office work system. He later worked at companies such as Bell Labs and IBM and held faculty positions at universities such as Stanford University, MIT and University of Colorado. He passed away in 2014.