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This article profiles several distinguished Black scientists, two of whom were affiliated with the ��Ůֱ������: Ernest Everett Just and Jewel Plummer Cobb.

This Black History Month, we’re recognizing Black scientists’ contributions to developmental biology, disease research, plasma storage and imaging techniques.  For more information about the following scientists, explore the resource list below.

Ernest Everett Just: offering insights into embryology (1883–1941)

Ernest Everett Just was an experimental embryologist, who conducted simple – yet elegant – experiments on marine invertebrates to demonstrate that the egg surface, or ectoplasm, plays a key role in fertilization and development [1].

Although born in 1883 in Charleston, South Carolina (USA), Just grew up on James Island off the coast of South Carolina, where his mother founded and directed a school. An avid learner, Just attended his mother’s school until age 13 when he left James Island to attend the Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanics College at Orangeburg (now South Carolina State College; SC, USA) [2]. He graduated at 15 with a Licentiate of Instruction, which qualified him to teach in any Black school in South Carolina. However, Just’s passion did not lie in teaching; instead, he enrolled at Dartmouth College (NH, USA) to study biology, literature and history. After graduating magna cum laude, Just joined the English faculty at Howard University (Washington DC, USA) before being asked to also head the biology department. He soon gave up teaching English to become the head of the zoology department. However, Just’s desire to pursue further learning led him to obtain a PhD from the University of Chicago (IL, USA) and conduct research at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole (MA, USA), while retaining his teaching position at Howard [1].

Source: Black Scientists’ Contributions to Research throughout History | BioTechniques