Black Scientists and Inventors

Updated June 13, 2022 | Infoplease Staff

Notable African-American Scientists and Inventors

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• Archibald Alphonso Alexander, design and construction engineer
• Benjamin Banneker, intellectual and scientist
• Patricia Bath, inventor
• Edward Bouchet, physicist, chemist
• Benjamin Bradley, inventor
• Herman Russell Branson, physicist
• George Washington Carver, agricultural chemist
• Emmett W. Chappelle, biochemist
• Jewel Plummer Cobb, biologist, physiologist
• Rebecca Cole, physician
• David Crosthwait, Jr., engineer, inventor
• Mark Dean, inventor
• Martin Robinson Delany, Black leader, physician
• Charles Richard Drew, physician
• Clarence L. Elder, engineer and inventor
• Philip Emeagwali, computer scientist, mathematician
• Evan Forde, oceanographer
• Lloyd Hall, chemist
• Samuel Elmer Imes, chemist, physicist
• Mae Jemison, astronaut, physician
• Thomas L. Jennings, inventor
• Frederick McKinley Jones, inventor
• Percy Lavon Julian, chemist
• Ernest Everest Just, biologist, educator
• Lewis Howard Latimer, inventor
• Henry Cecil Ransom McBay, chemist
• Elijah McCoy, inventor
• Garrett Augustus Morgan, inventor
• Maurice F. Rabb, Jr., ophthalmologist
• Norbert Rillieux, inventor
• Virgil Garnett Trice, Jr., chemical engineer
• Charles Henry Turner, entomologist
• Sarah Breedlove "Madame C.J." Walker, inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist
• Daniel Hale Williams, physician
• Granville Woods, inventor
• Roger Arliner Young, zoologist