BENJAMIN BANNEKER

Banneker (1731-1806) was born free in Maryland, and by the time he was a young man displayed an uncanny and amazing knack for engineering by carving a large, working wooden clock out of a pocketwatch he borrowed from a neighbor. At the advanced age of 58, Banneker began the study of astronomy and was soon predicting future solar and lunar eclipses. He compiled tables for annual almanacs, and "Benjamin Banneker's Almanac" were purchased widely from Pennsylvania to Virginia during the 1790s. In 1791, Banneker was a technical assistant in the first survey of the Federal District, which became Washington, D.C. When the architect in charge was dismissed and took his plans with him, Banneker recreated the plans from memory, saving the U.S. government the effort and expense of having someone else design the capital. The "Sable Astronomer" was often pointed to as proof that African Americans were not intellectually inferior to European Americans, and Thomas Jefferson himself noted this in a letter to Banneker.

Reference
Bedini, Silvio A. The Life of Benjamin Banneker: The First African American Man of Science. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1999.

MARJORIE LEE BROWNE

Browne (1914-1979) was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and was encouraged to study math by her father and step-mother. (Her mother died when she was two). While teaching in Texas, she worked on her doctorate at the University of Michigan during the summers, earning her Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1949 and being one of the first three Black women to earn such a degree. She went to what is now North Carolina Central University to teach mathematics, soon becoming the Chair of the Mathematics department in 1951. In the years of 1952-1953, Browne won a Ford Foundation fellowship to study combinatorial topology at Cambridge University. For twenty five years she was the only person in the mathematics department at NCCU with a Ph.D. in mathematics. Though resigning as department chair in 1970, she stayed at NCCU until retiring in 1979. In the last years of her life, Browne used her own money to help gifted math students pursue their education. She died of a heart attack.

SISTER MARY SYLVESTER DECONGE

DeConge (1933- ) was born in Wickliff, Louisiana, and earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics and French from St. Louis University in 1968. As a nun, she taught in parochial and high school in Louisiana during the 1950s and early 1960s. Between 1962 and 1964, she was a teacher at Delisle Junior College, Delisle, Mississippi. Sister Deconge was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, from 1968 to 1971. In 1971, Sister Deconge was appointed to the mathematics faculty at Southern University in Baton Rouge.