BIPOC physicists, some well-known and others I think you should hear more about! A short thread !

Edward Bouchet, 1852—1918. He did his undergrad at Yale and became the first Black man to earn a PhD in the US in 1876. He wrote his dissertation on refractive indices. He finished his undergrad & PhD in 6(!) years and graduated near the top of his class.

Sameera Moussa, 1917—1952. Dr. Moussa got her PhD in nuclear physics in the '40s and became the first woman to be appointed professor at Cairo University. She visited Berkeley in the '50s, and her career was unfortunately cut short by a tragic car accident shortly after.

Abdus Salam, 1926-1996. Prof. Salam was Pakistani and shared the Nobel in 1979 for pioneering work on "electroweak unification," a theory that unifies the weak force with the electromagnetic at high energies. He used much of his prize money to support other Pakistani scientists.

Herman Branson, 1914—1995. In the 1940s, Prof. Branson worked with Linus Pauling at Caltech, where he studied secondary protein structures! Using X-ray crystallography data, he came up with the alpha helix, also called the Pauling–Corey–Branson α-helix.

Willie Hobbs Moore, 1934—1994. Dr. Moore finished her PhD at UMich in 1972, making her the first Black woman to earn a PhD in physics. She researched proteins using spectroscopy. While a doctoral candidate, she held multiple engineering positions, and would go on to work at Ford.

Ronald McNair, 1950—1986. Dr. McNair earned a PhD from MIT in 1976, becoming distinguished for dissertation work on energy absorption in atoms by laser excitation. He continued researching in physics at Hughes Research Lab. He passed away in the tragic Challenger accident.

Shirley Ann Jackson, 1946—. Prof. Jackson was the first Black woman to earn a PhD at MIT. She works in particle physics and has worked at Fermilab, CERN, AT&T Bell Labs, and SLAC. She was Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Position under Clinton, and is now President of RPI!

Mohamed M. Atalla, 1924—2009. Born in Egypt, Dr. Atalla immigrated to the USA and joined Bell Labs in 1949. In 1959, he and Dawon Kahng invented the MOSFET transistor, used in virtually all modern electronics. For this, he was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Fred Begay/Clever Fox, 1932—2013. Dr. Begay was the first Indigenous & Navajo man to earn a PhD in physics. A war vet, Dr. Begay took HS night classes and college classes during the day to finish his education. He studied ways to improve plasma instabilities in controlled fusion.

Salwa Nassar, 1913—1967. Dr. Nassar was the first Lebanese woman to her PhD in physics, doing so in 1945 at Berkeley, where she studied cosmic ray showers. She returned to Lebanon to work at the American University of Beirut, later becoming President of Beirut College for Women.

Chien-Shiung Wu, 1912—1997. Prof. Wu completed her PhD Berkeley in 1940 and accepted a professorship at Columbia soon after. There, she conducted a groundbreaking experiment showing parity is not conserved in the weak interaction, which would win her much acclaim & success.

Mayda Velasco, 1966—. Prof. Velasco was born in Puerto Rico, where she finished her undergrad. She finished her PhD at Northwestern, where she is now faculty. She is a leading member of CMS, a 4,000+ member collaboration and director of COFI, a research institute in San Juan.

J. Ernest Wilkins Jr., 1923—2011. Prof. Wilkins finished his bachelors at the age of 17 at UChi and later led a distinguished career at Howard, Clark Atlanta Uni., Argonne. He published in differential eqs, differential geometry, nuclear engineering, and many, many other fields!

Albert Baez, 1912—2007. Prof. Baez was born in Mexico and later moved to the USA. In the '40s, Baez co-invented the X-ray reflection microscope, which is widely used in biology to see cells! He was a devoted humanitarian who helped advocate & support educational causes in Mexico.

Phew! It's TOUGH to even summarize these scientists' many accomplishments in 280 characters, so sorry if I missed something about these *stunning* individuals.

Not to mention, it's short list, there's MANY, MANY more BIPOC who have contributed to the field, so please share the names & information of others.