No Black History Month feature would be complete without a foray into the world of science. I was directed to this site of the National Society of Black Physicists--and now it's my pleasure to pass it along to you. (I learned of this site only the other day, from aalbc-dot-com/thumpers-corner-dot-com. Thanks, all!)
I guess it's fitting that I include this post this year, as I've seen stuff on campus explaining that 2005 is the "World Year of Physics." I hadn't planned to do anything to mark this...well, besides just continuing to have mass and exist in space/time and stuff--but thanks to the 'Net, now I can!
An excerpt from the NSBP's "Einstein and Race" section:
(Note: This involves one of the questions I answered incorrectly on the Black History Month quiz I mentioned here. Bolding emphasis below is mine in reference to this item.)
Einstein at Lincoln University
During the last twenty years of his life, Einstein almost never spoke at universities. He considered the honorary-degree ceremonies to which he was frequently invited to be "ostentatious." Moreover, the abdominal aneurysm that would eventually take his life caused him increasing pain and made it difficult to travel. Given the constant stream of university invitations, he found it easiest to adopt a just-say-no rule. In May 1946, he broke that rule to speak at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Both the year and the choice of school are significant.
About 60 miles from Princeton, Lincoln University was chartered in 1854 as, in the words of its eighth president Horace Mann Bond, "the first institution found anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent." In 1946, When Dr. Bond invited Einstein to Lincoln, the student body consisted of 265 men. "It was still a small school," Mrs. Julie Bond, Dr. Bond’s widow, recalls. "But of course, everyone came to hear Einstein. We didn’t have a hall big enough, so we held the ceremony outdoors in the grove."
"On Friday, May 3rd, a very simple man came to Lincoln University," one student wrote a few days later in the school newspaper:
His emaciated face and simplicity made him appear as a biblical character. Quietly he stood with an expression of questioning wonder upon his face as…President Horace Mann Bond conferred a degree. Then this man with the long hair and deep eyes spoke into a microphone of the disease [racism] that humanity had. In the deep accents of his native Germany he said he could not be silent. And then he finished and the room was still. Later he lectured on the theory of relativity to the Lincoln students....
In accepting the invitation, Einstein clearly intended to send a message to a wider audience. But the media then — like the media since then — had different news priorities. While almost all of Einstein’s public speeches and interviews were widely covered by the major media, in this case, most of the press treated the address by the world’s most famous scientist at the world’s oldest black university as a non-event.
The members of NSBP (along with National Society of Hispanic Physicists) are even holding their annual meeting this week in Colorado Springs--My blogging timing just could not have been better! I hope it will be a great and productive meeting. Keep up the great work, folks!
(Also see this Sigma Xi page for great links to sites dealing with diversity in science and engineering.)