Notable African-American scientists Benjamin Banneker, Charles Henry Turner and Mark Dean. Image Credit for Mark Dean: Stanford University.

Black History Month is a remembrance of important people and events in the history of the African-Americans and takes place February of each year.

The remembrance was first founded in 1926 by U.S. historian Carter G. Woodson as a week of remembrance named "Negro History Week". It was originally in the second weekend of February as two famous birthdays book-ended the week, that of former President Abraham Lincoln who abolished slavery and Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist who overturned the fallacy that blacks were inferior to whites.

I am reminded of Black History Month every January and February when comments start to appear on two of my blogs: Famous African-Americans Scientists & Famous African-Americans Scientists & Innovators: Part II. Usually the comments are those of thanks for helping with a report. Apparently, many local schools in the area give out an assignment around this time to research a famous African-Americans figure. So with that in mind, here are three more who have led to the annals of science and innovation.

Benjamin Banneker (1731 – 1806)
Mathematician, Astronomer, Surveyor

Banneker was born into a family of free blacks in Maryland. He learned the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic from his grandmother and a local Quaker schoolmaster. However, most of his knowledge was self-taught. He is famous for accurately making a wooden clock after studying the inner workings of one. He finished it at age 21 and it worked faithfully, striking on the hour, until his death. In 1791, he was appointed to the District of Columbia Commission, which handled the survey work that established the city’s original boundaries. From there, he went onto to write and publish the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris. The books contained information on tides, future eclipses, and medicinal formulas. Benjamin Banneker has been coined the first African-Americans intellectual.

Charles Henry Turner (1867 – 1923)
Zoologist

In 1892, Turner became the first African-Americans to hold a graduate degree at the University of Cincinnati. In 1907, he also became the first African-Americans awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Even though he had a doctorate, he chose to teach at high schools. It is thought that he did so in order to devote more time to the observation of insects. He published 49 papers on insects; titles of them include: Habits of Mound-Building Ants, Experiments on the Color Vision of the Honeybee, and Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. Because of his observation and research, Turner proved for the first time that insects could hear and distinguish pitch.

Mark Dean (1957 to Present)
Innovator & Computer Scientist

Dean was born in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, a master's degree from Florida Atlantic University, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University – all in electrical engineering. He also holds three of the original nine IBM patents that brought about the IBM home personal computer. He led the team of IBM computer scientists that invented the ISA bus – the device enabled computer components to communicate to each other rapidly. This breakthrough made personal computers fast and efficient. He also led the design team that created the first one-gigahertz computer processor chip. For his contributions, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1997. He was also the first African-Americans to become an IBM Fellow, which is the highest level of technical excellence given at the company. Dean is still with IBM to this day as a Vice President. He oversees the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.

Carl Sagan’s scientific career took a bruising because of his outreach work.

I am convinced that a lot of people’s misconceptions about science could be cleared up with a little outreach from scientists. I’m talking about outreach activities like creating websites that give good, reliable, understandable information, talking to school and adult groups, getting involved in museums, PBS, the Discovery Channel, etc.

Getting scientists to do any of this is the tricky part. They have no immediate incentives to do it and in fact, there are disincentives. But they need to learn that it is in their best interests.

Taxpayers pay most scientists’ salaries through federal grants. An uninformed, suspicious, or actively hostile public obviously will not want to pay for scientific research. So anything that can be done to inform the public about the good work being done will probably loosen the purse strings in Washington at least a bit.

Of course the problem with this argument is that it uses an abstract fear of something in the distant future. Sort of like global warming.

As we’ve learned from that, most people aren’t willing to sacrifice much for far off, future dangers. If gas is cheap, we’ll keep driving big cars. And we certainly won’t sacrifice any current goods for a future that may or may not come to pass.

Same thing with scientists. Outreach is a thankless task that can actually work against the people who do it. Scientists who do a lot of outreach are often perceived as not being serious about true science and they’re dinged for it.

There is also no incentive at Universities to do outreach. As anyone who has been involved in academic science knows, the key to success is to get government grants that help fund the scientist’s research, his or her department and the University. Everything else an academic scientist does takes a backseat to this. And outreach isn’t even in the car.

Outreach takes scientists away from the lab. It is in the lab where results are generated that can be published to get grants to fund more research. Less time on research equals less money.

So to get scientists doing outreach, we need to change the incentives. There either has to be a change at Universities so that outreach is valued. And by valued I mean tenure track positions or long term funding for people to do outreach. Frankly this is pretty unlikely.

The other possibility is to include outreach as part of a scientist’s grant. In other words, to get money for their research, scientists will need to do some outreach.

I am aware of two major funding agencies—the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)*—that mandate outreach for at least some of their grants. These mandates are a critical first step in getting more digestible science out to the public. But to make a major dent, we need the NIH to get involved too. They fund a whole lot more research and so a whole lot more outreach would get done too.

The NSF and NHGRI requirements are definitely causing a lot of scientists to scramble around and try to find outreach projects to fund. (Email me if you have some spare money lying around!) But I don’t know the quality of the outreach that is being done.

Hopefully the people doing outreach are better than the average scientist at talking or writing about science with the public. For the most part, the money would probably best be spent on hiring someone with a scientific background who is good at explaining science. Or in training scientists first in how to effectively communicate science to the public.

All of this points to another major issue—we need to figure out what we want from these outreach opportunities. Is it to provide a good source of information for the public? To enhance understanding of how science works? To teach people how to tell good science from bad? To train the next generation of scientists? To…? No one is really providing leadership on these questions. Let’s hope someone does soon.

*The NHGRI is interested in increasing the numbers of genomic scientists who are under-represented minorities. Definitely worthwhile but not really doing a lot for the public understanding of science.

Here is a great book on the subject: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future.

President Obama with Chief Justice John Roberts, after taking
the oath of office a second time. Source: whitehouse.govWe didn’t want to be alone celebrating the inauguration of Barak Obama, so my wife Michele and I went to the Lesher Auditorium in Walnut Creek to watch it live on CSpan on a big screen with about 600 of our neighbors. Some joy must be shared.

Add to our joy as a regular citizens that of our tribe–scientists and other seekers of the truth in its many forms. It’s time we came out of the shadows. Here is some of the reason for our joy, in the form of excerpts from President Obama's inauguration speech.

"We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age… "

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends–hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism– these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths."

Our success depends on curiosity! Say amen! I say amen!

We have a world leader now who believes that moral clarity and the continual pursuit of truth are inseparable.

I could talk about the proposed economic recovery package and the billions of dollars that will weatherize 1-million homes a year; or the billions that will go to renewable energy research and development; or the millions of jobs that will be created in a new, more sustainable economy. But I want to take a moment to pat us on the back.

One of the values taught me in theology classes, which comes straight from the Bible, is the value of a faithful remnant. Some might know of the story of Abraham and God discussing the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and how God was hot to destroy the cities but Abraham talked God into relenting if only ten good people could be found there. There is the non-biblical story of the rainmaker who came to a town in the midst of drought, and by living a simple, quiet, decent life, brought rain. I don’t think God is into democracy. God won’t wait for 51% of us to get it right. It only takes a few. So to the relative few who continued to pursue goodness, beauty and truth in the last 8 years, I say congratulations. We kept the faith; we ran the race; we won. Way to go. There will be lots of hard work and setbacks ahead, of course. But for now, let’s celebrate.