You’ve probably heard of the "Hidden Figures." Thanks to Hollywood, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson are finally household names. But honestly? They are just the tip of a very massive, very old iceberg. For decades, African American women scientists have been doing the heavy lifting in labs and observatories while the history books basically looked the other way. It isn’t just about "representation" or filling a diversity quota. It’s about the fact that without these women, your GPS wouldn’t work, your cataracts might still be blinding you, and we’d have no idea what the moon is actually made of.
History has a funny way of narrowing down complex movements into one or two "acceptable" faces. We do it with everything. But when you dig into the archives of the USPTO or the rosters of NASA’s early days, you find a chaotic, brilliant, and often frustrating paper trail of women who fought twice as hard to get half the credit.
The GPS in Your Pocket Starts with Gladys West
Think about the last time you used Google Maps to find a coffee shop. You can thank Gladys West for that. While the world was obsessed with the Space Race, West was quietly sitting at a desk at the Naval Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia, processing data from satellites.
She wasn't just "crunching numbers." She was building a mathematical model of the Earth's shape—a geoid—that was so incredibly precise it became the foundation for Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. It’s wild to think about. She started her career in 1956 as one of only four Black employees at the base. She often says she just "worked hard," but her work involved programming the monstrous IBM 7030 "Stretch" computer to account for every tiny gravitational variation on the planet's surface.
She didn't get a parade. She didn't get a movie deal for fifty years. In fact, her contribution to GPS was mostly unrecognized by the general public until she submitted a short autobiography for an alumni function. That’s how we found out. One of the most important African American women scientists in the realm of geodetic modeling was almost a footnote because she was "just doing her job."
Dr. Alice Ball and the Leprosy Cure
Let’s go back even further, to a time when leprosy (Hansen’s disease) was basically a death sentence or a ticket to permanent isolation. Alice Ball was a chemist. She was the first woman and the first African American to earn a master's degree from the University of Hawaii. She was only 23 years old when she developed the "Ball Method."
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Before her, people tried using chaulmoogra oil, but it was too thick to inject and tasted too bad to swallow. Alice figured out how to isolate the ethyl esters of the fatty acids so it could be injected and absorbed by the body. It was a medical breakthrough. Then, tragedy struck. She died at 24.
What happened next is kinda infuriating. The president of the university, Arthur L. Dean, took her research, published it under his own name, and started calling it the "Dean Method." It took decades for her name to be restored to that discovery. This is a recurring theme. The work gets done, the credit gets "borrowed," and the world moves on until someone decides to look at the original lab notes.
Why We Still Misunderstand the Role of African American Women Scientists in Tech
The narrative usually frames these women as "the first" or "the only," which makes it sound like they were anomalies. They weren't. They were part of a lineage. If you look at the 1940s and 50s, there were groups of Black women working as "human computers" across the country, not just at Langley.
Take Dr. Gladys West again. Or consider Dr. Shirley Jackson. Jackson was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. from MIT. Her research in theoretical physics at Bell Labs laid the groundwork for things we take for granted now: portable fax machines, touch-tone phones, solar cells, and fiber optic cables. If you’ve ever used Caller ID to avoid a spam call, you’re using tech that stems from her work.
Yet, when we talk about "The History of the Internet" or "The History of Physics," her name is rarely the first one mentioned. We tend to focus on the "Silicon Valley Bros" of the 90s, completely skipping over the theoretical physics done by Black women in the 70s that made the hardware possible in the first place.
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The Medical Frontier: Dr. Patricia Bath
In the 1980s, Patricia Bath changed the game for ophthalmology. She invented the Laserphaco Probe. It’s a device that uses lasers to vaporize cataracts quickly and nearly painlessly. She was the first African American woman doctor to receive a medical patent.
But her impact wasn't just the tool. She co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. She believed that eyesight was a basic human right. She noticed that blindness rates among Black populations were double those of white populations, and she didn't just write a paper about it—she created a whole new discipline called "community ophthalmology."
The Nuance of the "First" Label
Being "the first" is a heavy burden. Dr. Marie Maynard Daly was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry in the U.S. (1947). Her work was fundamental to understanding how cholesterol affects the heart and how proteins are constructed in the body.
But being the first often meant you were also the only mentor, the only advocate, and the only person in the room who looked like you. This creates a specific kind of pressure. You aren't just a scientist; you’re a representative. Many of these women, like Dr. Jewel Plummer Cobb, spent as much time fighting for funding for minority students as they did on their own cancer research. Cobb’s work on melanoma was groundbreaking, yet she’s also remembered for her leadership at several universities where she kicked the doors open for others.
Space is More Than Just Rockets
When people think of African American women scientists at NASA, they think of the math. But we should also talk about Dr. Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space. She’s a physician, an engineer, and a dancer.
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There’s a misconception that these women were "just" math whizzes. Jemison’s mission on the Space Shuttle Endeavour involved conducting bone cell research. She was looking at how gravity—or the lack of it—affects the human body. Her career after NASA has been about merging technology with social issues, focusing on sustainable development and healthcare in developing nations. She didn't just "go to space"; she used the platform to rethink how science serves humanity.
Current Challenges: It’s Not Just History
We like to think the struggle ended in the 1960s. It didn’t. Even now, women of color in STEM face "the double bind." This term, coined by Dr. Shirley Malcom, describes the intersectional discrimination of being both a woman and a person of color in scientific fields.
Recent data from the National Science Foundation shows that while the number of Black women earning STEM degrees is rising, they are still significantly underrepresented in tenured faculty positions and executive leadership in tech. The "leaky pipeline" is a real thing. It’s not a lack of interest; it’s often a lack of institutional support.
How to Actually Support Diversity in Science
If you're looking to move beyond just reading about these women and actually want to see a shift in the landscape, it requires more than just a celebratory post during Black History Month.
- Fund the Foundation: Organizations like the National Society of Black Physicists or the Association for Women in Science provide direct scholarships and networking.
- Audit Your Sources: If you're a student or a professional, look at the citations in your papers. Are you citing a diverse range of researchers, or just the same three names everyone else uses?
- Mentorship over "Pity": High-level mentorship is what changes careers. If you're in a position of power in a lab or a tech firm, don't just "hire" for diversity—mentor for leadership.
Actionable Steps for the Curious
You don't need a Ph.D. to help change the narrative around African American women scientists. Here is how you can actually make an impact:
- Read the Primary Sources: Instead of just reading summaries, look up the patents. Look for Patricia Bath’s patent for the Laserphaco Probe or Dr. Shirley Jackson’s papers on subatomic particles. Seeing the actual work is much more powerful than reading a "Top 10" list.
- Support Documentaries and Books by Black Authors: Authors like Margot Lee Shetterly (Hidden Figures) and Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (The Disordered Cosmos) provide the context that standard textbooks miss.
- Check Your Local History: Many of these women worked in state universities or local hospitals. Research the "firsts" in your own city. You'd be surprised how many local legends are buried in the archives.
- Nominate for Awards: If you are in the scientific community, proactively nominate Black women for fellowships and prizes. A lot of the "prestige" in science is built on who gets nominated, not just who is the smartest.
The history of science is often written by the winners, but the future of science is being built by the people who refuse to be ignored. We are long past the point where these names should be a surprise. They should be the standard.