ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

So I had been turned off by sickness, like my grandmother was sick, the aunt sick, you had to babysit the sick.
Well see, I didn’t want to have any part of anything that had to do with biology and medicine. I knew it would
be some kind of physical science.
Clip 4 - Decision to Major in Chemistry: We were standing in these lines for registration. This is how it happened,
how I got into chemistry. And these long lines, you know, back in those days you’d be standing in line
for days. These long lines. And so a bunch of us in the biology line, and I looked up and saw there was another
line up there with nobody in the line. So, my three little buddies, the three of us, I said “Man, let’s go up here
and get in this short line.” We walked up to Dr. McDonald and told him we wanted to register and he said, “You
know this is chemistry, you’re registering for the chemistry major.” So, we told him, “Okay, we want to be
chemistry majors then.” So he asked us about our math grades, so when we told him, this was our second year,
our second year in college. So, he asked about our math grades. So, once we told him our math grades, he said
“Yeah, you’d be a good chemistry major.” So, the three of us signed up, and we all graduated three years later
with chemistry, as chemistry majors. I could have very well stayed in the biology line. I could have gotten in the
math line. I really wanted to major in physics, but they didn’t have a physics major. I enjoyed physics a whole
lot more in high school than I did chemistry. But, ‘cause… physics was just nice, but they didn’t have physics
majors. So, the three of us chose chemistry, and we got in that line and we became… That was the class of ’66
as chemistry majors.
Clip 5 - Types of Chemistry: I’m what they call an inorganic chemist; I did my research in inorganic chemistry.
Right now, I’m more of an environmental chemist, because it just, it’s a little bit more research money available
for schools like TSU in environmental chemistry and environmental science. So, we go with the money.
Actually, we call it, I was just basically a synthetic chemist, just make stuff for the joy of making it. It has no
use. You just make it. Synthesize it. And so, I had some niobium compound that I’d prepared and they turned
out to be air sensitive so I had to do all my work in a glove box and handle all my… All my solvents had to be
dried and when you say dried, had to make sure they had no water in them. If I was using let’s say, benzene, I
had to dry the benzene to make sure it didn’t have traces of water in it because all my compounds were sensitive
to water and air, so I did my work in a glove box, enjoyed making my compounds.
Clip 6 - Chemical Discoveries: It turns out that, those of us who just make stuff to say that we make it and it’s
the only thing of its kind in the world. Then, you publish the material. People know about it in the literature.
Every once in a while, they’ll fi nd a use for it. Now it turns out that, I hadn’t found no real use for the niobium
compound that I made, but because I made the niobium compound and got involved with some of what we call
legins…some other materials that were associated with niobium, I was able to use those, to use metals other
than niobium to use catalysts to liquefy coal. And so I did some of that work at TSU. [I] actually went out to
Exxon Research and Engineering in ’82 on sabbatical, spent about 15 months out there and wound up with a
couple of patents, but I was still using the same kind of compounds, not niobium but other metals with the same
kind of material that I was making niobium compounds. And it turned out that, I could make…they could improve
the colic faction.
Clip 7 - Concerns for Scientifi c Field: The policy makers need to really look at paying…putting enough
resources in to make high education affordable to African Americans and everybody else. It’s not just going to
be African Americans. We talk a lot about the lack of minorities and going into the science, technology, engineering
and mathematics and we got to get past just the talk. We got to put the resources in there because what I
found out is that if you really put the resources there that you can fi nd the students that are willing to come and
study in these fi elds…I think that because of the war, that [there’s] only so much money to go around and I’m
hoping that this was only delayed because of that. And as soon as we get some of these other problems resolved
that we can really start concentrating on the necessary resources into education.
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Chemistry