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The Earliest Ph.D. Awards to Blacks in the Natural Sciences
AGRONOMY
Major Franklin Spaulding
(1900-1964)
Major Spaulding was born in Clarkston, North Carolina, on September 18, 1900. He received bachelor's degrees from North Carolina State College in 1925 and Cornell in 1927, remaining at Cornell for his M.S. in 1928. He returned to North Carolina State University as professor of agronomy, 1928-1937, during which time he earned a Ph.D. in agronomy from Massachusetts State College in 1935, submitting as his dissertation "Factors Influencing the Rate of Decomposition of Different Types of Plant Tissue in Soils, and the Effect of the Products on Plant Growth." After serving as professor of agronomy at Prairie View State College (1937-1938), Tuskegee Institute (1938-1940), Langston University (1940-1942), and Tuskegee again (1942-1945), he moved to Tennessee A&I State College, where he chaired the agronomy department from 1946 to 1958. He was elevated to dean of the School of Agronomy and Home Economics in 1958, in which post he was serving at his death on April 19, 1964.
ANATOMY
Roscoe Lewis McKinney
(1900-1978)
Roscoe McKinney was born in Washington, D.C., on February 8, 1900. He received his bachelor's degree from Bates College in 1921, following which he taught biology for two years at Morehouse College. A Rockefeller fellowship supported graduate study at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in anatomy in 1930. His dissertation was "Studies on Fibres in Tissue Culture, III, The Development of Reticulum Into Collagenous Fibres in Cultures of Adult Rabbit Lymph Nodes" (published 1930). Thereupon he was appointed professor of anatomy at Howard University, setting up its first department of anatomy in the College of Medicine. He chaired the department until 1947 (also serving as vice dean of the medical school for much of the time). He continued as a professor until his official retirement in 1968, though he remained on the faculty until 1976. He was a visiting professor in Iraq (1955-1957), India (1960-1962), and Vietnam (1969-1971). McKinney died on September 30, 1978.
ASTRONOMY
Harvey Washington Banks
(1923-1979)
Harvey Banks was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on February 7, 1923. In the nation's capital he attended the famous Dunbar High School before entering Howard University, where he earned B.S. (1947) and M.S. (1948)...