The Nobel Prize was established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist, engineer and armament manufacturer who invented dynamite. He established the prize reportedly because a French newspaper erroneously published his obituary in 1888, calling him the “merchant of death” and saying, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Upon reading his own obit, he wanted to change how the world would remember him, so he decided to leave the bulk of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes. He wanted them to be awarded annually to those who confer the “greatest benefit to mankind” without distinction of nationality.
So who was overlooked? Certainly the 12 black winners of the Nobel Prize deserved to be recognized for their world-class work and their impact on humanity. But 12 blacks out of 813 laureates? That’s less than 1.5% of all winners.
Here are a few black people who perhaps were overlooked by Nobel juries.
1. George Washington Carver (1864 – 1943)
Nobel Prize in Agriculture
Country: United States
Believed to have been born into slavery, this American scientist, botanist, educator and inventor is best-remembered for his work with peanuts. He helped change the course of U.S. agriculture. He promoted planting peanuts and sweet potatoes as alternatives to cotton, both as sources of their own food and as products that could improve their quality of life. He published 44 bulletins for farmers. They contained 105 recipes for peanuts. He also created 100 products made from peanuts, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline and nitroglycerin. His work contributed to improving race relations. In 1941, Time magazine called him a “Black Leonardo,” referring to Leonardo da Vinci.
2. Charles Drew (1904-1950)
Nobel Prize in Medicine
No doubt, Charles Drew saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with his significant contributions to blood preservation. As one of the world’s leading authorities on blood, he revolutionized the understanding of plasma, leading to the creation of blood banks. He headed the American Red Cross blood bank, but when the military ordered that only Caucasian blood be given to soldiers, he resigned. Racist authorities considered “Negro blood” to be impure, and believed that “white blood” would not contaminate or pollute as “black blood” might. Thus, the blood of whites would be collected, while the blood from blacks would not be. This meant Drew’s own blood could not be donated even though he headed the program.
3. Herman Branson (1914-1995)
Nobel Prize in Physics
Branson was co-inventor of the alpha helix in protein structure, and deserved a share of the Nobel prize in physics. Reportedly, the alpha helix was his discovery. Branson, who became president of Lincoln University, gave his account of the discovery in a 1984 letter, saying that in 1948-49, while working for Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology, Branson did research on how amino acids could be arranged in a protein molecule. A year later, Pauling wrote up the discovery and credited Branson and another scientist as coauthors. Pauling later became a Nobel laureate.
4. Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Percy Julian synthesized and identified physostigmine, a drug used to treat glaucoma and to improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients. It was also used as an antidote to nerve gas. Julian, who was born in Montgomery, AL, as the grandson of a slave, devised a way of filtering the chemicals in soybean oil to allow quantity production of hormones for medical applications. He acquired more than 115 patents in his career. One was for a foam used to extinguish oil and gasoline fires during World War II.
5. David Blackwell
(1919-2010)
Nobel Prize in Mathematics
The son of a railroad worker with a fourth grade education, David Blackwell is considered the greatest of all African American mathematicians and among the world’s preeminent statisticians of all time. Born in Centralia, IL, he taught himself to read by looking at the words and pictures on seed packages. He was the seventh African American to receive a doctorate in math, earning his degree in 1941 from the University of Illinois. In 1979, he won the von Neumann Theory Prize. A free-ranging problem-solver in many subdisciplines, he researched the mathematics of bluffing and developed a theory on the optimal moment for an advancing duelist to open fire, a problem with battlefield applications because the question of when to open fire is vitally important. Blackwell has contributed to several areas in mathematics, including dynamic programming, game theory, measure theory, probability theory, set theory, and mathematical statistics. Several theorems are named for him, including the Rao-Blackwell theorem, which shows how to turn crude guesses into good estimates. Blackwell’s renewal theorem deals with a unit’s operating lifetime. He also introduced the concept of Blackwell space.
6. Ngugi wa Thiong’o
(1938- )
Nobel Prize in Literature
Like Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Ngugi lived through colonialism as a child and protested his disillusionment when the promise of decolonization did not pan out. He too has been imprisoned, exiled and attacked for his work as a novelist, playwright, critic and activist. What was different about Ngugi, however, was his brave decision in 1977 to renounce English. He chose to write instead in his native language, Gikuyu. He said he wished to write in a language his mother and ordinary people could understand. Limiting his audience to Gikuyu-speakers was groundbreaking but tantamount to commercial suicide. It constrained his ability to reach world audiences. His stories were infectious however and were swiftly absorbed into Gikuyu culture. His acclaimed 2006 novel is called “Wizard of the Crow.” It starts out with an exploration of the five possible reasons for the illness of the second Ruler of the fictional Free Republic of Aburria. His latest book is a memoir, “Dreams in a Time of War.” In it, Ngugi writes movingly about war and familial relations, including the community of mothers, siblings and a single patriarch. Ngugi is the fifth child of the third of his father’s four wives. Ngugi still has a chance to win the Nobel Prize.
