10 Black Engineers and Scientists Whose Contributions You Should Know

Even though access to science and engineering education in the US was incredibly limited until recent history—the first Black graduate of MIT, Robert R. Taylor, graduated in 1892—Black Americans have a significant legacy in the scientific fields. It’s important to remember and honor that legacy and to highlight the brilliant work done by Black scientists in the modern-day. Though this list is by no means complete, below are ten scientists, engineers, and inventors whose work we all should, and in our daily life do, appreciate, from innovations in mobile networks to video games and toys and up to the sky and stars.

1. Mark Dean

The architect of the modern-day personal computer, Mark Dean, was an inventor from a young age—while growing up, he and his dad constructed a tractor from scratch. He went on to develop the ISA bus and lead a design team for making a 1GHz computer chip. He holds three of nine patents for the design of the IBM personal computer launched in 1981, of which he was a co-creator. In 1995 he became the first Black American to be named an IBM Fellow, and, as of 2019, he has his own holiday. His home of Knox County, Tennessee, has officially set aside April 25^th as Mark Dean Day.

2. Shirley Ann Jackson

Physicist Shirley Ann Jackson was the first Black woman to earn a doctorate from MIT in any field and the second to earn a US doctorate in physics. In her distinguished career, she has worked with the Theoretical Physics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories, served on faculty at Rutgers University, and currently leads Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as President. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve as Chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and served as Chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board under the Obama Administration. As of 2020, Jackson joined the Nature Conservancy Global Board, where she will serve until 2029.

3. Lonnie Johnson (U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams/Released)

Lonnie Johnson is an aerospace engineer who worked a twelve-year stint at NASA, but he is best known for the invention of the Super Soaker—among the world’s bestselling toys—in 1989. He also patented “a pneumatic launcher for a toy projectile” in 1996, leading to the invention of the nerf gun and revolutionizing toy blasters. While the toy lines stemming from both of these inventions are famously popular, it was only by pursuing legal action that Johnson began to receive proper compensation from Hasbro. In 2013, he filed a lawsuit upon discovering that Hasbro had been underpaying royalties and was awarded $73 million in arbitration. Johnson holds more than 250 patents, most of which are for the Super Soaker, which was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2015.

4. Walt W. Braithwaite

Jamaican-born American engineer Walt W. Braithwaite served as the highest-ranking Black executive in Boeing’s history and played an integral role in introducing CAD/CAM and IGES technology into Boeing’s operations. He joined the company in 1966 as a tool engineer in the Fabrication Division and was the senior engineer responsible for developing Boeing’s use of computer technology by 1975. In this role, he implemented CAD/CAM in the design of commercial airplanes, and over the next decades, his teams oversaw the development of the 707, 727, 737, 747, 767, and 777 the first commercial aircraft to be entirely designed via computer-aided design. During Braithwaite’s time at Boeing, he also created a mentorship program, and in 2000 he was named President of Boeing Africa and acted as an ambassador and liaison between local governments and regional Boeing divisions.

5. Aprille Ericsson source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr

Watching the Apollo missions in the first grade inspired Aprille Ericsson to become the first Black woman to receive a Ph.D. in Engineering at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In her career as an aerospace engineer, Ericsson has worked on various groups within NASA, contributing to projects that launched satellites to monitor Earth and missions that send spacecraft to other bodies within the solar system. She worked on the Tropical Rain Measuring Mission, which provides data on the atmospheric phenomena El Niño and La Niña and their effects on crop productivity and has supported development on instrumentation for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2009. In addition to her engineering work, she has taught at Howard University and Bowie State University and at HU Public Charter Middle School of Math and Science.

6. Jerry Lawson  Image credit: By Unknown, but currently held by Museum of Play / Estate of Jerry Lawson - Original publication:Hilliard, S. Lee (December 1982) 

Dubbed the father of the videogame cartridge, Jerry Lawson is known for his work designing the Fairchild Channel F game console and leading the team that pioneered the commercial game cartridge. Lawson started as an engineering consultant with Fairchild Semiconductor’s sales division in 1970; while working there, he also created the early coin-op arcade game Demolition Derby in his garage, using Fairchild’s new F8 processors. When he was made Chief Hardware Engineer in the mid-70s, he spearheaded the development of the Fairchild Channel F game console, the first specifically designed to use swappable game cartridges. He was also one of two Black members, along with Ron Jones, of the Homebrew Computer Club, the group of early computer hobbyists that also included Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. After leaving Fairchild, Lawson founded Videosoft, the development company that made the software for the Atari 2600, which replaced the Channel F as the top system on the market.

7. Jesse Russell

After training as an electrical engineer at Tennessee State University, Jesse Russell went on to pioneer the field of digital cellular communication in the 1980s. Working in wireless communications for over 20 years, Russell has accrued over one hundred patents; he is most well known for his design of a cellular base station and the fiber optic microcell utilizing high power linear amplifier technology and digital modulation techniques, enabling new digital services for cell phone users. Russell continues to innovate in emerging technologies and the next generation of broadband wireless networks and serves as the CEO of incNetworks, which focuses on 4G networks and services.

8. Valerie Thomas Image credit: By NASA, restored by Adam Cuerden - Public Domain

Valerie Thomas began working for NASA as a data analyst in 1964. There, she worked to develop real-time computer data systems to support satellite operations control centers and oversaw the creation of the Landsat program, the longest-running enterprise dedicated to the acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. However, she is perhaps best known for the invention of the illusion transmitter, which she patented in 1980. The transmitter uses two parabolic mirrors to transmit 3D illusions of an object—a camera trained on the first mirror sends a signal to a projector aimed at the second mirror. The invention is still used by NASA, and has been adapted for use in surgery, as well as for televisions and video screens.

9. Kunle Olukotun Image credit: by Helleski - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Founder of Afara Websystems, Oyekunle Ayinde Olukotun is a pioneer of the multi-core processor. Founded in 2000, his company created multi-core SPARC-based computer processors for data centers. Afara Websystems was then acquired by Sun Microsystems, becoming integral to its throughput computing system. Olukotun has since founded the Pervasive Parallelism Lab at Stanford, which he hopes to use to make it easier to write software for multi-core chips, and he now leads the Stanford Hydra research project, which developed one of the first chip multiprocessors with support for thread-level speculation.

10. Lanny Smoot

The only person on this list with the title of Imagineer, Lanny Smoot made history this year by earning 102 patents for developments he has made as the creative mastermind behind many Walt Disney World attractions. Smoot, a Disney Research Fellow, is the creator of interactive visual and robotics systems like Madame Leota’s floating head in the Haunted Mansion and the virtual and interactive koi ponds at the Crystal Lotus Restaurant at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel. His 102 patents are the most earned by anyone working at The Walt Disney Company. Smoot envisions technology as a way of creating a better reality and also works to create mentorship opportunities for minority students.

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