Pioneering Black African American Women Chemists and Pharmacists

Citation: Núñez Valdés, J.; Pablos Pons, F.d.; Ramos Carrillo, A. Pioneering Black African American Women Chemists and Pharmacists. Foundations 2022,2, 624–638. https://doi.org/10.3390/ foundations2030043 Received: 4 July 2022 Accepted: 26 July 2022 Published: 2 August 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Editorial Pioneering Black African American Women Chemists and Pharmacists Juan Núñez Valdés1,* , Fernando de Pablos Pons 2and Antonio Ramos Carrillo 3 1Department of Geometry and Topology, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain 2Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain; [email protected] 3Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain; [email protected] *Correspondence: [email protected] 1. Introduction It is assumed that the history of modern science in Africa began between the last two decades of the 19th century and the first two or three of the 20th century. It is true that in our days there are important female figures who were born on the continent, such as the Ph.D. in Chemistry Fatma Hamad, from Tanzania, or the Egyptian Shendy Nada, Ph.D. in Physics, the Ugandan Florence Mutonyi D’ujanga, Ph.D. in Mathematics and the Mozanbiquela Sarifa Abdul Magide Fagild or Kenyan MaryAbukutsa-Onyango, Ph.D. in Sciences, but the global development of science in Africa, from scientific, health, or literature points of view referring to women date back to the 19th century. However, the people of African descent, both men and women, who promoted the development of this modern science in Africa were, in the main, born in the United States, within families of strong African descent, what has come to be called Black families, and another general characteristic of these people is that they all belonged to the Black race. This article shows the biographies of four women of these characteristics, who achieved important milestones in the fields of Chemistry and Pharmacy and who contributed in a notable way, with their knowledge and their work, to the development of African science. They are Alice Ball, chemist and pharmacist, and Patricia Bath, Mary Elliott Hill and Marie Mainard Daly, graduated in Chemist, who made remarkable discoveries throughout their professional lives. The objective of the article is to highlight the contributions of these four women and show them as a models and examples for the rest of the women who want to follow in their footsteps. Finally, some brief brushstrokes on the lives and work of several other BBlack women of Black descent, also of BBlack race and born in the United States, like the previous ones, are also indicated, who in a similar way contributed greatly to the development of the current African science. 2. Materials and Methods For the elaboration of the article, information has been sought on the women who are quoted in it, with the objective of highlighting all their remarkable aspects of their lives that are ignored in the scarce existing biographies about them already made. 3. Results In this section, we show the biographies of several women of African descent, although not born on the continent but in the United States, who reached great scientific achievements and discoveries in Chemistry and Pharmacy but at present are not well known by society, both because of the lack of knowledge about the African continent in general and because of the dismissive attitude toward the work of women that still persists in many countries. Foundations 2022,2, 624–638. https://doi.org/10.3390/foundations2030043 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/foundations Foundations 2022,2625 3.1. Alice Ball. Her Biography Alice Augusta Ball, born in the United States, although of African descent, had the honor of becoming the first woman graduated in Chemistry from the College of Hawaii (nowadays known as the University of Hawaii) and also become the first female Chemistry professor of that college. She also introduced the first useful treatment for people diagnosed with Hansen’s disease (leprosy): an oil extract under an injectable way very effective for treating leprosy until the advent of antibiotics in 1940 [ 1 ]. However, unfortunately, she could not obtain the merit that her discovery deserved in life, as she passed away very young, at the age of 24, not being recognized until years after her death for such an important achievement. In fact, other people other people put their name to her work and she was largely forgotten, but recently she has received proper recognition for her work on leprosy and overcoming racial and gender barriers in science [2,3]. Alice Augusta Ball was born on 24 July 1892 in Seattle (Washington, WA, USA), into a wealthy middle-class family. Her parents were James Presley Ball, Jr., a newspaper editor, photographer, and lawyer, and Laura Louise (Howard) Ball. The couple had 4 children: Robert, William, Alice, and Addie. Her paternal grandfather, James Ball Sr., famous Black photographer, also stood out for using the daguerreotype technique in United States for the first time. In 1903, as the grandfather suffered great pain due to arthritis, the family decided to move to Honolulu (Hawaii), trying to look for a place with a warmer climate and therefore more suitable to alleviate those pains. However, unfortunately the grandfather died the year after his arrival and that made the family return to Seattle in 1905 [4]. Once in Seattle, Alice Ball attended high school and graduated with honors in Science in 1910. She later entered the University of Washington, where she obtained undergraduate degrees in pharmaceutical Chemistry (in 1912) and Pharmacy (in 1914). She also published a 10-page article, entitled “Benzoylations in Ether Solution”, written joint with her professor of Pharmacy, in the accredited Journal of the American Chemical Society [5]. After graduating, Alice Ball (Figure 1) received two scholarships, one to study at the University of Berkeley, in California, and another to study at the University of Hawaii. She chose to move to Hawaii to study a master’s in chemistry. In 1915, she was the first woman and the first African American to get a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii [1]. Figure 1. Alice Ball in 1915. Source: [3]. Foundations 2022,2626 Later, when she was 23 years old, she started to work in a teaching and research position in that institution and became the very first woman chemistry instructor in it [6]. Regarding her research, Alice Ball worked very hard in the laboratory to develop a successful treatment for people who have been diagnosed with a Hansen’s disease (leprosy). In her graduate studies at the University of Hawaii, she took as the subject of her doctoral thesis the research on the chemical composition and active substance of “Piper methysticum” (kava) [ 5 ]. At that stage, Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, who worked as an attending physician at Kalihi Hospital in Hawaii, asked her to help him design a method to isolate the active chemical components in chaulmoogra oil [ 2 ]. That oil had already been used in Chinese and Indian medicine and had also been used to treat leprosy with mixed results. However, most patients did not like to take it for long periods of time as it was bitter and tended to upset the stomach. Alice Ball (in the Figure 2working in the lab) developed a process to isolate fatty acid ethyl esters from oil into fatty acid components of different molecular weights, which allowed her to manipulate the oil into a water soluble injectable form. Her method, which was highly successful and alleviate leprosy symptoms, later known as the “Ball Method”, was used on thousands of infected individuals for over thirty years until the discovery of sulfone drugs. Figure 2. Alice Ball working in the lab with chaulmoogra oil. Source: [7]. However, she could not publish her results because she passed away before. The chemist Arthur L. Dean, from the University of Hawaii, took over her work and started producing large quantities of injectable chaulmoogra extract. In the American Medical Association Journal was published in 1918 by a Hawaiian physician that 78 patients in Kalihi Hospital had healed after being treated with those injections. Isolated ethyl ester was the most recommended treatment for leprosy until the use of sulfone-based drugs in the 1940s [5]. Alice Ball died on 31 December 1916, when she was only 24 after complications resulting from inhaling chlorine gas in a lab teaching accident. Few months before, she had returned to Seattle for being treated. In 1917, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser newspaper published a collaboration suggesting that her death could have been caused by chlorine poisoning while she was working. However, the real cause of her death is still unknown because her initial death certificate was modified in the sense of indicating that the cause of her death was tuberculosis [4]. During her life, she did not get to see the full impact of her discovery. What’s more, following her death, the president of the College of Hawaii, Dr. Arthur Dean, continued Alice Ball’s research without naming her. Dean even called “Dean Method” Ball Method. As can be seen, one more case in which a woman suffers from the so-called “Matilda Effect” (see Appendix A). Foundations 2022,2627 The University of Hawaii ignored Alice Ball’s work for almost 90 years, until it recognized it in 2000 and paid honor to her by dedicating a plaque with her name, located on the unique chaulmoogra tree on campus (Figure 3). On the same day, the Lieutenant Governor declared 29 February as “Alice Ball Day”, which is celebrated every 4 years. In 2007 the University of Hawaii again awarded her the Medal of Distinction [3]. Figure 3. The chaulmoogra tree and the.plaque at its feet in honor of Alice Ball. Source: University of Hawaii. Several publications have appeared in recent years, by different authors, glossing both her figure and her work (Figure 4). Figure 4. A book on the Ball Method. Source: [7]. Foundations 2022,2628 3.2. Patricia Era Bath. Her Biography Born on 4 November 1942 in Harlem, Manhattan, New York, Patricia Era Bath, graduated in Chemistry, was the first female member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, the first woman responsible for a graduate program in Ophthalmology, the first woman Honorary worker of the UCLA Medical Center (a distinction that was granted to her after her retirement), the first BBlack woman to work as resident in ophthalmology at New York University and also the first BBlack woman to practice as a surgeon at UCLA Medical Center. She was also the first Black doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. In fact, she held four patents. She also was one of the founders of the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington D.C. She can also be classified as an inventor: she created the Laserphaco Probe, an instrument for the laser treatment of cataracts [8]. Her father, Rupert Bath, was an immigrant from Trinidad, passionate about culture, who worked first as a columnist and a merchant marine, and who at one point became the first BBlack man to work for the New York Subway as a train driver. Her mother, Gladys Bath, who was descended from African slaves, was a housewife while her children were young, and later she became a domestic servant, in order to help them pay for their studies. Both of them greatly influenced her vocation: her father, teaching her about the wonders of travel and the importance of discovering new cultures. Her mother piqued her interest in science when giving away her a chemistry set. It is not surprising, therefore, that Patricia Bath was passionate about science from a very young age, especially Chemistry and Mathematics, being lucky that her parents had saved enough money to send the two brothers to Charles Evans High School [ 9 ]. She carried out her first studies at the Charles Evans Hughes Institute, where she obtained brilliant qualifications, needing just two and a half years to obtain her diploma. During her stay at the Institute, Patricia Bath got a National Science Foundation Fellowship for her in-depth study of the medical works of Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1952. This scholarship allowed her to researching at Yeshiva University and at the Central Hospital in Harlem, in which she tried to study the relationships between cancer, nutrition and stress. The program head, Dr. Robert Bernard, impressed with Patricia Bath’s discoveries, incorporated her discoveries in a scientific paper he presented at a conference. In 1960, while still a teenager, Patricia Bath won Mademoiselle magazine’s “Award of Merit” for her contribution to the project [10]. Later, Patricia Bath obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Hunter College in Manhattan in 1964. She moved to Washington D.C. to study in Howard College Medical University, where she received a Ph.D. in 1968. During her first months in the North American capital, the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act took place. About that experience, Patricia Bath would say years later [9] Dr. Martin Luther King told us that we should forget hate, segregation, racism. Our duty was to ignore all that noise and focus on our goals and that’s what I did. I had a few obstacles, but I freed myself from them. In Howard, she was president of the National Student Medical Association and collaborator of the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health [11]. Patricia Bath was hired as an intern at Harlem Central Hospital and shortly after graduating as an ophthalmologist, and after completing a one-year fellowship at Columbia University, Patricia Bath took her family and moved to the West Coast of the United States. The “Jules Stein” Ocular Institute, attached to the University of Los Angeles (UCLA) received her to continue her research on corneal transplants and degenerative eye diseases [10]. She moved to Yugoslavia in 196. There, she could study child health, seeing that the practice of eye care was not the same between racial minorities and the poor population. Later she also perceived lots of cases of blindness among her Black and poor patients. She decided to address this issue and persuaded her Columbia professors to operate free of charge on blind patients at Harlem Central Hospital, where eye surgery was not previously Foundations 2022,2629 offered [ 9 ]. Patricia Bath was one of the pioneers in the volunteer-led discipline of “community ophthalmology” worldwide, providing needed eye care to disadvantaged populations. Between 1970 and 1973, she worked at New York University as a resident in Ophthalmology, being the first African-American woman to hold this role. She married in the early 1970s and her daughter Eraka was born in 1972 [9]. In those years, she also briefly worked as an assistant professor at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA and at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. In 1976, Patricia Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which established that “eyesight is a basic human right.” By 1983, Patricia Bath helped create the Ophthalmology Residency Training program at UCLA-Drew, which she also chaired, becoming, in addition to her other firsts milestones, the first woman in the nation to hold that position. In 1983, she became the head of a department at Charles R. Drew, the first woman to hold that position. In 1993, she retired from UCLA, which subsequently named her the first woman on its honorary staff. She served as Professor of Ophthalmology at Howard University School of Medicine and Professor of Telemedicine and Ophthalmology at St. Georges University [ 10 ] and was one of the founders of the ophthalmology training program at King-Drew Medical Center [9]. Patricia Bath (Figure 5) gave many international conferences and was the author of more than 100 scientific articles. Figure 5. Patricia Bath in 1994. Source: [9]. Regarding her inventions, Patricia Bath held four patents in the United States. The year 1981 would mark a before and after in her life. At that time she began to work on her most recognized invention: the Laserphaco ultrasound (Laser PHotoAblative Cataract surgery). For more than five years, she immersed herself in the construction of a tool that would make it possible to weaken, in a less painful way, the rough and outer layer of the cataracts. This allowed the procedure to be much more precise and accelerated. Indeed, in that year, she conceited the Laserphaco probe, a medical instrument that improves the use of lasers for cataract removal, and “for cataract lens ablation and removal.” That device was completed in 1986, after Patricia Bath researched lasers in Berlin, and patented it in 1988, making her the first African American to receive a patent for medical use. The device, which dissolves cataracts with a laser quickly and almost painlessly, irrigates and cleans the eye and allows easy insertion of a new lens, is used internationally to treat this condition [10]. Three of the four Patricia Bath patents are related to the Laserphaco probe. In 2000, she was awarded a patent for a method devised to use ultrasound technology in the treatment of cataracts. In early 1993, Patricia Bath (Figure 6) decided to retire. In the following decades, Patricia dedicated many efforts to humanitarian work. She visited several African countries, especially Kenya and Tanzania, where she promoted various initiatives to prevent Foundations 2022,2630 childhood blindness, as well as promote new information and communication technologies (ICTs) among poor students. Figure 6. Patricia Bath. Source: [9]. With her health deteriorating, she decided to move to San Francisco to be closer to her daughter Eraka and granddaughter. On one occasion, shortly before her death, Eraka and Patricia sat down to talk. Both discussed the life of the ophthalmologist and exchanged concerns about the work that she still felt pending. On that occasion, the daughter wasted no time in offering a revelation to her mother: “Even if you did not seek to be a role model, you became one” [9]. Thanks to the work carried out throughout her life, her effort and her dedication to Ophthalmology, Patricia Bath received honors from two of her universities. In 1998, Hunter College gave tribute her by placing her in their “Hall of Fame” and Howard University named her a “Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine” in 1993. An illustrated book about her life and work (Figure 7, left) was also published in 2017. Both the National Association of Science Teachers and the Chicago Public Library considered that book as one of the best books for children of the year. Specifically, that library named it “the best of the best selection [ 12 ]. Another book on her was titled “Women on Science”, by Rachel Ignotofsky (Figure 7, right). Figure 7. Covers of two books on Patricia Bath. Source: [9]. Foundations 2022,2631 Patricia Bath (Figure 8) passed away on 30 May 2019, after suffering for months from lung cancer that finally ended her life. Her daughter Eraka was in charge of communicating that her mother had died, answering the questions that some of the media asked her after the sad event. Eraka, instead of highlighting the merits, the numerous publications or the five patents for inventions that her mother managed to register in the United States, preferred to focus more on offering another point of view, a more personal, more human, lesser-known side. Among the phrases she dedicated to her mother, the following can be highlighted [9]: Figure 8. Patricia Bath. Source: [9]. My mother was an exceptional woman, as well as simple. She used to wear sneakers and blue jeans all the time ([ . . . ) Mom liked to look casual, not pretentious. She came from very humble roots. It could be said that she had a second career as a humanitarian. Her attitude was always vigorous, tireless. 3.3. Mary Elliott Hill. Her Biography There is not much precise data in the literature about Mary Elliott Hill. In fact, although that information is not officially confirmed, it is thought that she is the first Black woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, [13] Hill was born in South Mills, North Carolina, on 5 January 1907 and had two brothers. Her parents were Robert Elliott, fireman, and Frances Bass [1]. She began her university studies in 1925, at the Virginia State College for Negroes (now Virginia State University) and got her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in 1929. When she finished her degree, she began her teaching work in 1930 at the Laboratory Secondary School of her University. In 1932 she served as a part-time Professor of Chemistry at the Hampton Institute and became a full professor in 1937 [ 1 ]. Later, between 1938 and 1942, she worked as a professor at her University [14]. Mary Elliott Hill took advantage of summers of her working years to go after graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the first Black woman to earn a master in Chemistry, in 1941 [14]. In 1942, she worked at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina as a professor, and also as an assistant professor of Chemistry at Tennessee A & I State College (a Black college now known as Tennessee State University). The following year she went to Kentucky State University, where her husband, Carl McClellan Hill, was the head of the Chemistry department. Carl Hill, who had been the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tennessee A & I, had accepted the position as president of Kentucky State College (now Kentucky State University) in Frankfort, Kentucky and Mary Elliott Hill followed him. The marriage had three children. Between 1951 and 1952 she was named associate professor and became interim head of that department [1]. Foundations 2022,2632 Mary Elliot Hill (Figure 9) and Carl Hill worked together, and they specialized in the use of ketenes [ 15 ]. Together with other people of the research team guided by her husband and with himself, she co-authored more than 40 publications on these topics, although she was never cited as the senior author [ 1 ]. She published two textbooks: the first, General College Chemistry, in 1944, written with Myron B. Towns and her husband. The second, the laboratory manual “Experiments in Organic Chemistry”, in 1954, which was made into four editions [15]. Figure 9. Mary Elliott Hill working in the lab. Source: [16]. Several of the student taught by her in Black colleges and universities in which she taught became Chemistry professors (Figure 10). She was a member of several institutions: the Tennessee Academy of Science, the National Institute of Science, Alpha Kappa Alpha National Honor Society, and Beta Kappa Chi [1]. Figure 10. Mary Elliott Hill. Source: [17]. Regarding her personal life, it is known that Mary Elliott Hill married Carl McClellan Hill (the date is unknown). The newspaper “The Courier-Journal” (Louisville, Kentucky), of 13 February 1969 affirmed that they were married two years after a classmate introduced them at the age of 16, while in another source is indicated that the marriage took place during their second year at Virginia State College, suggesting sometime between 1925 and 1927 [18].