Description: Willie Hobbs Moore with her daughter Dorian. source: Ronald E. Mickens Collection on African-American Physicists, AIP Niels Bohr Archives 2022 is the 50th...
Willie Hobbs Moore with her daughter Dorian. source: Ronald E. Mickens Collection on African-American Physicists, AIP Niels Bohr Archives 2022 is the 50th anniversary of the first Black woman to earn a PhD in either physics or astronomy. In 1972, Willie Hobbs Moore became the first Black woman to earn a PhD in physics — nearly 100 years after Edward Bouchet earned a PhD in physics, making him the first African-American to earn a PhD in any subject.
Back in 2019, one of the first items I put on my desk in my brand new faculty office was a photo of Dr. Moore. Since I was beginning the lonely journey as the first Black woman to hold a tenure line position in theoretical cosmology or particle theory, this image was part of an array of ways that I designed my office to remind me, and anyone who came into that space, that not only did I belong there, but I was part of a proud and beautiful tradition of Black folks doing science.
Around the same time, I started thinking about what it would mean to push the mantra of the #CiteBlackWomen Collective in new directions — specifically, what would it mean for physics if physicists pro-actively engaged the work of Black women physicists in their own research? My own feminist philosophy work argues that race and gender are a factor in which science gets pushed forward — who stays in the room, who gets cited. What if we changed whose work we build on? The idea of a bibliography was born.
Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein