Content area
Full text
For a couple of decades now, many good people have been puzzling over how to increase the flow of minorities into the scientific pipeline in the United States. Indeed, a host of programs have been conceptualized, touted, and funded--and largely, they have not made much of a difference. The result is that in 1992 the numbers remain so depressing and the policy prescriptions for change so mind-numbing, that I thought one scientist's real life story might better focus our attention on what will have to be done to change the composition of our beloved professions.
Back in the 1950s, a 16-year-old student from a predominantly black high school in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was considered promising enough to be sent off to college--Morehouse, a historically black college in Atlanta, Georgia--2 years ahead of his peers. He wasn't planning to become a scientist: He had never heard of physics nor had he taken a high school course in chemistry or trigonometry, much less advanced algebra. As a matter of fact, although he came from a supportive family and had good and dedicated teachers, he was unprepared academically for college and greatly lacking in confidence. He probably would have flunked out of Morehouse long before graduation--had it not been for a physics teacher there who took the youngster under his wing, guided him, challenged him, and wouldn't leave him alone until he graduated ... in physics!
But in those days--as perhaps today--getting a science degree from a small college was no passport to future scientific success. After 2 years of teaching undergraduates, first at Morehouse and then at Howard University, the 22-year-old graduate confidently arrived at the doctoral program in physics at Washington University in St. Louis. He was in for another severe shock. He took his first mathematics exam and found it remarkably easy; he even finished ahead of most of the other new graduate students and left the room early. When the grades were posted, he discovered he'd gotten a 9--not on a scale of 10 but 9 correct out of 100.
His subsequent experiences weren't that bad in every course, but they were bad enough to make the young man want to quit that first year. Once again, however, a mentor appeared out of nowhere--in this...