After training at Williams Air Force Base,\u00a0Guion \u201cGuy\u201d Bluford Jr. flew 144 combat missions\u00a0during the Vietnam War. From there, he got his master\u2019s degree and PhD and set his sights on NASA. Not only was Guion Bluford Jr. the first African American man to travel into space, but\u00a0he went up giggling\u2014literally. From 1983 to 1992, Bluford made four trips to space, working as a mission specialist on theChallenger<\/i>\u00a0and then on the\u00a0Discovery<\/i>. In 1997, he was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n6. Kimberly Bryant, Electrical Engineer & Founder of Black Girls Code<\/h4>\n
Kimberly Bryant had worked for years as asuccessful electrical engineer\u00a0before moving to the Bay Area. Once she made it to the heart of Silicon Valley, she noticed that minorities were severely underrepresented in the startup world. Coupled with the fact that her daughter, Kia, was sick of instructors focusing more on the boys (who outnumbered the handful of girls) at a programming camp, she knew she had to do something about it.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Bryant decided to create\u00a0Black Girls Code, a nonprofit that empowers girls from underrepresented communities by introducing them to programming. While not as lucrative as her previous jobs, the positive influence from her nonprofit organization has already made an impact: girls who have participated in Black Girls Code have started clubs and are becoming leaders in their communities.<\/p>\n
Over the course of\u00a0Julian Manly Earls\u2019 career, he\u2019s racked up quite a few \u201cfirsts.\u201d Over the course of four decades at NASA, Earls became NASA\u2019s first black section head, first black office chief, first black division chief, and first black deputy director\u2014not to mention he wrote NASA\u2019s first health physics guides.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s impossible to go into the many research and development programs Earls has been a part of (we\u2019ll at least mention aeronautical propulsion and microgravity sciences), he\u2019s no doubt been an integral part of NASA\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
In 2010, Fast Company named Angela Benton one of their\u00a0Most Influential Women in Technology. And it\u2019s not hard to see why. Three years prior, she had co-founded Black Web 2.0, now called B20, to highlight the exceptional innovation and talent \u201cof\u00a0Blacks in the technology and new media industries.\u201d After working as a web designer, creative director, and front end web developer, Benton took on an entirely new challenge in 2011: creating NewME, a platform that\u00a0helps minority and women entrepreneurs\u00a0create successful businesses. The online platform has helped entrepreneurs raise more than $20+MM in venture capital funding.<\/p>\n
\n
George Washington Carver, circa 1910.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
9. George Washington Carver, Botanist & Inventor<\/h4>\n
Though he was born a slave, George Washington Carver became one of the most highly regarded botanists of his day. He completed his botanical studies degree at Iowa State Agricultural College, and was then hired to run Tuskegee Institute\u2019s agricultural department.<\/p>\n
Carver quickly gained international attention for his work. He taught revolutionary crop rotation methods, developed a mobile classroom that allowed him to teach farmers on-site, researched new uses for existing crops, and\u00a0supported replacing expensive commodities\u00a0with less expensive crops. Much of this research focused on peanuts. In fact, Carver uncovered more than 100 uses for peanuts, which he used when\u00a0testifying to Congress in favor of a tariff on imported peanuts.<\/p>\n
Carver\u2019s groundbreaking work had a huge impact on current crop-growing techniques and positively influenced many black farmers, who were still learning to navigate their new role as freemen post-Civil War. He was made a member of the Royal Society of Arts and consulted with Theodore Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi regarding agricultural matters.<\/p>\n
10. Mae Jemison, Astronaut & Doctor<\/h4>\n
In 1992, Mae Jemison boarded the\u00a0Endeavour<\/i>\u00a0and was thrust into orbit, becoming the first African American woman in space. But she hadn\u2019t always set her sights on space. In 1977, Jemison received a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from\u00a0Stanford. From there, she went to Cornell University Medical College and got her M.D., eventually working as a Peace Corps medical officer while teaching and completing medical research.<\/p>\n
Only then did Jemison apply to NASA\u2019s astronaut training program, becoming one of just 15 candidates from a pool of more than 2,000 people who applied. She holds nine honorary doctorates in science and is a dancer.<\/p>\n
11. Frank Greene, Tech Entrepreneur<\/h4>\n
As one of the \u201cfirst black technologists,\u201d Frank Greene expanded the notion of who could innovate in the tech space. While serving in the U.S. Air Force as an Electronics Officer, Green developed high-performance computers for the NSA. He then began working for Fairchild Semiconductor, where he helped develop the patented memory chip design. He holds the patent for the integrated circuit that helped the company become a reckoning force in the semiconductor space.<\/p>\n
Over the course of his life, Greene taught electrical engineering and computer science for five universities. He founded multiple companies and was one of just a few dozen people to be inducted into Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
12. Aprille Ericsson-Jackson, Aerospace Engineer<\/h4>\n
Aprille Ericsson-Jackson was always a gifted student with an affinity for STEM subjects. She received her Bachelor\u2019s of Science from\u00a0MIT, where she worked on projects related to manned space flight missions. While Ericsson-Jackson\u2019s interest in aerospace engineering sparked a desire to become an astronaut, she was\u00a0placed on medical review by NASA for asthma and knee surgery. She went on to attend Howard University, becoming the school\u2019s first African American woman to receive a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (the Aerospace option). She was also the first African American woman to receive a PhD in Engineering at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).<\/p>\n
Ericsson-Jackson still works as an aerospace engineer at NASA as an instrument manager for aproposed mission to bring dust from the Martian lower atmosphere back to Earth.<\/p>\n
13. Vivien Thomas, Surgical Technician<\/h4>\n
Countless lives have been saved thanks to Vivien Thomas\u2019s research. After graduating from high school with honors, Thomas\u2019s dreams to attend college were cut short when he lost his tuition money following stock market crash in 1929. Instead, he began working as a lab tech at Vanderbilt\u2019s medical school under Alfred Blalock. There he became an invaluable worker, with his research changing the way people thought about traumatic shock.<\/p>\n
In 1941, Blalock became the chief surgeon at\u00a0Johns Hopkins University\u00a0and he brought Thomas along with him. Together, they developed an operation to that helped babies with Tetralogy of Fallot or blue baby syndrome by increasing the amount of oxygen in the blood and reducing constriction. Thomas contributed greatly to the\u00a0operation techniques, and in conjunction with Blalock and cardiologist Helen Taussig, his work helped create the Blalock-Taussig shunt. In fact, without the techniques of this heart surgery pioneer, babies with this condition might still face high mortality rates.<\/p>\n
HBO made a film inspired by\u00a0Thomas\u2019s story in 2004 featuring actors Alan Rickman and Mos Def. Watch a trailer for the film, called\u00a0Something the Lord Made<\/i>\u00a0here:<\/p>\n