Margaret E. M. Tolbert

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Margaret E. M. Tolbert
BornNovember 24, 1943  Blue pencil.svg (age 75)
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Margaret Ellen Mayo Tolbert (born November 24, 1943) [1] is a biochemist who worked as a professor and director of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee University, and was an administrative chemist at British Petroleum. [2] [3] From 1996 to 2002 she served as director of the New Brunswick Laboratory, becoming the first African American and the first woman in charge of a Department of Energy lab. [4] [5]

Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with elements and compounds composed of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during a reaction with other substances.

Tuskegee University Private, historically black university located in Tuskegee, Alabama, USA

Tuskegee University is a private, historically black university (HBCU) located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It was established by Lewis Adams and Booker T. Washington. The campus is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service. The university was home to scientist George Washington Carver and to World War II's Tuskegee Airmen.

BP British multinational oil and gas company

BP plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the world's seven oil and gas "supermajors", whose performance in 2012 made it the world's sixth-largest oil and gas company, the sixth-largest energy company by market capitalization and the company with the world's 12th-largest revenue (turnover). It is a vertically integrated company operating in all areas of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It also has renewable energy interests in biofuels and wind power.

Contents

Early life and education

Margaret Ellen Mayo was born in Suffolk, Virginia to Jessie Clifford "Clifton" and Martha Taylor Artis Mayo. [5] Her mother died when she was quite young, and her father a few years later. She and her siblings were raised for several years by her grandmother Fannie Mae Johnson Mayo, [1] and after her grandmother became ill, by the older sister, Audrey Mae. [6] Margaret and her five siblings were kept together in spite of financial difficulties. [1] The city was strongly segregated, with different areas at the beach and different entrances and drinking fountains in stores and movie theaters. [6]

Suffolk, Virginia Independent city in Virginia, United States

Suffolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2017 census, the estimated population was 90,237. It is the largest city in Virginia by boundary land area as well as the 14th largest in the country.

Margaret Mayo attended Ida V. Easter Graded School, and then East Suffolk Junior High. She walked two miles to reach junior high school and was still the top in her class. [1] Her hard work continued through high school. She worked as a maid to help her family while she took advanced placement classes. [1] A well-off African-American couple for whom she worked, Mrs. and Mrs. S. A. Cook, were supportive, sponsoring her as a debutante and encouraging her to attend university. [7] She graduated from East Suffolk High School in 1963 at the top of her class of 99 students, and was its valedictorian. [8]

Debutante upper class girl introduced to society

A debutante or deb is a young woman of aristocratic or upper-class family background who has reached maturity and, as a new adult, comes out into society at a formal "debut" or possibly debutante ball. Originally, the term meant the woman was old enough to be married, and part of the purpose of her coming out was to display her to eligible bachelors and their families with a view to marriage within a select circle.

Valedictorian is an academic title of success used in the United States, Canada, Central America, Singapore, and the Philippines for the student who delivers the closing or farewell statement at a graduation ceremony. The chosen valedictorian is often the student with the highest ranking among their graduating class. The term is an Anglicised derivation of the Latin vale dicere, historically rooted in the valedictorian's traditional role as the final speaker at the graduation ceremony before the students receive their diplomas. The valedictory address generally is considered a final farewell to classmates, before they disperse to pursue their individual paths after graduating.

University education

Margaret enrolled in the Tuskegee Institute, an action enabled primarily by the availability of financial aid. The Cooks drove her to Alabama, and introduced her to friends at Tuskegee, the Howells. [7] [8] :96–97 At the time Tuskegee was actively involved in the civil rights movement. [8] :95–98 At Tuskegee University, Margaret enrolled in chemistry with a minor in mathematics. [3] :21 Margaret was a student research assistant under the mentorship of C. J. Smith and L. F. Koons of the Tuskegee Institute Department of Chemistry. She also participated in summer research at Central State College in Durham, North Carolina and at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). As an assistant at Tuskegee, she studied the conductivity and electrical resistance of different chemicals in water solutions. At ANL, she studied the electrical resistance and chemical combinations of uranium. [1] She graduated from Tuskegee in 1967 with a B.S. degree. [1] [5] She also married briefly and had a son. [3] :21–23

North Carolina Central University university

North Carolina Central University (NCCU), also known as simply Central, is a public, historically black university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by James E. Shepard in affiliation with the Chautauqua movement in 1909, it was supported by private funds from both Northern and Southern philanthropists. It was made part of the state system in 1923, when it first received state funding and was renamed as Durham State Normal School. It added graduate classes in arts and sciences, and professional schools in law and library science in the late 1930s and 1940s.

Durham, North Carolina City in North Carolina, United States

Durham is a city in and the county seat of Durham County in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city's population to be 251,893 as of July 1, 2014, making it the 4th-most populous city in North Carolina, and the 78th-most populous city in the United States. Durham is the core of the four-county Durham-Chapel Hill Metropolitan Area, which has a population of 542,710 as of U.S. Census 2014 Population Estimates. The US Office of Management and Budget also includes Durham as a part of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Combined Statistical Area, which has a population of 2,037,430 as of U.S. Census 2014 Population Estimates.

Argonne National Laboratory science and engineering research national laboratory in Lamont, IL, United States

Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by the University of Chicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy located in Lemont, Illinois, outside Chicago. It is the largest national laboratory by size and scope in the Midwest.

She earned her master of science degree in analytical chemistry from Wayne State University in 1968, [1] and returned briefly to Tuskegee, where she supervised chemistry projects and taught mathematics (1969-1970). [9] She was then recruited to Brown University where she defended her thesis in 1973 and received her doctorate degree in biochemistry in 1974. [1] [3] :21–23,28 Her research involved signal transduction in rat liver cells. Her research advisor at Brown was John Nicholas Fain of the Division of Medical Sciences. [3] :25–27 While at Brown she married her second husband, Henry Hudson Tolbert. [7]

Wayne State University American public research university located in Detroit, Michigan

Wayne State University (WSU) is an American public research university located in Detroit, Michigan. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering nearly 350 programs to more than 27,000 graduate and undergraduate students. Wayne State University is Michigan's third-largest university.

Brown University University in Providence, Rhode Island

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, it is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

Signal transduction The cellular process in which a signal is conveyed to trigger a change in the activity or state of a cell. Signal transduction begins with reception of a signal (e.g. a ligand binding to a receptor or receptor activation by a stimulus such as light),

Signal transduction is the process by which a chemical or physical signal is transmitted through a cell as a series of molecular events, most commonly protein phosphorylation catalyzed by protein kinases, which ultimately results in a cellular response. Proteins responsible for detecting stimuli are generally termed receptors, although in some cases the term sensor is used. The changes elicited by ligand binding in a receptor give rise to a biochemical cascade, which is a chain of biochemical events as a signaling pathway.

The research conducted by Margaret while she was a student at Brown University was "... among the first studies in signal transduction to point out that there are rapid effects of ligands that did not involve RNA or protein synthesis and occur by some intracellular messenger other than cyclic AMP" [8] according to Fain. She also taught science and mathematics at the Opportunities Industrialization Center in Providence, Rhode Island, while completing her graduate studies. [5]

Further career

After earning her doctorate degree, she returned to Tuskegee as a faculty member and researcher in the chemistry department, continuing her rat liver research (1973-1976). [5] [9] She taught at Florida A&M University for two years (1977–1979) and was an associate dean there [9] before accepting a short-term visiting research position at the International Institute of Cellular and Molecular Pathology (ICP) in Brussels, Belgium in 1979. [1] This position was made possible by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. [5] She then accepted a short-term visiting research position at Brown University, again working on the biochemistry of the liver. [1]

In 1979, [9] Tolbert returned to Tuskegee as the first female director of The Carver Research Foundation of Tuskegee University [5] and as provost of the university, holding these positions for eight years. [1] She also continued to research the effects of drugs on the human liver. [9]

Other institutions at which she has conducted research include: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Biomedical Institute, Summer 1974), University of Texas Medical School at Houston (Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy; Department of Pharmacology; Summer 1977), and the NARACOM/ARIEM (Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine) in Natick, MA (between 1980 and 1985).

In 1987, Tolbert joined the research department of British Petroleum. [1] [9] She was involved as a corporate planner in the merger of BP and Standard Oil of Ohio. [1] Between 1990 and 1993, she was In 1994, she worked briefly as a consultant for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute [9] developing international research programs. [1]

Tolbert then accepted the position of division director at the Argonne National Laboratory. In 1996 she resigned to become director of the New Brunswick Laboratory. She was the first African American and the first woman in charge of a Department of Energy lab. [3] :58–63 [5] She was director of the New Brunswick Laboratory from 1996 to 2002. [4] She served on Presidential Committees on Education and Technology. [5] As director of the New Brunswick Laboratory, she was involved in projects to prevent the spread of nuclear materials and weapons technology, the preparation of nuclear reference materials for the standardization of instruments, assessment of worldwide measurement capabilities at nuclear laboratories, and measurement of nuclear material from worldwide samples. [7]

As of September 22, 2002, Tolbert became Senior Advisor to the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA), promoting activities at the National Science Foundation (NSF) that increase the participation of underrepresented groups (women, minorities, and people with disabilities) in science and engineering. She has acted as Executive Secretary and NSF Executive Liaison to the Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering. [10] She retired from the NSF in December 2011. [11] [12]

Honors

Tolbert has received a number of awards and honors. [10] In 1998, Tolbert was elected as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is also a member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Organization of Black Scientists. [5]

Autobiography

In 2015, she published an autobiography, Resilience in the Face of Adversity: A Suffolkian’s Life Story (Balboa Press, 2015). [11]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Kessler, James H.; Kidd, J.S.; Kidd, Renee A.; Morin, Katherine A. (1996). Distinguished African American scientists of the 20th century. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press. pp. 317–320. ISBN   0897749553 . Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  2. ↑ Center for Oral History. "Margaret E.M. Tolbert". Science History Institute . Retrieved 26 March 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Brown, Jeannette E. (13 August 2009). Margaret E.M. Tolbert, Transcript of an Interview Conducted by Jeannette E. Brown at National Science Foundation Arlington, Virginia on 13 August 2009 (PDF). Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Foundation . Retrieved 26 March 2018.
  4. 1 2 "Managerial Leadership in Government". BlackEngineer.com. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Spangenburg, Ray; Moser, Kit (2003). "Tolbert, Margaret Ellen Mayo". African Americans in Science, Math, and Invention. New York, NY: Facts On File. pp. 211–212. ISBN   978-1-4381-0774-5.
  6. 1 2 Marable, Christina (July 26, 2016). "'Resilience in the Face of Adversity': The Life of Dr. Margaret E. M. Tolbert". Mace & Crown. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Margaret E. M. Tolbert". Chemical Heritage Foundation. Archived from the original on July 12, 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Tolbert, Margaret Ellen Mayo (2015). Resilience in the Face of Adversity: A Suffolkian's Life Story. Bloomington, IN: Balboa Press. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Warren, Wini (1999). Black women scientists in the United States. Bloomington, Ind. [u.a.]: Indiana University Press. pp. 263–264. ISBN   9780253336033.
  10. 1 2 "Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Margaret Ellen Mayo Tolbert". Black Ivy Alumni League. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  11. 1 2 Banks, Mary B. (July 1, 2016). "Retired scientist recounts her journey in new memoir". Baltimore Times. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  12. ↑ "Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering Meeting Minutes February 28, 2012" (PDF). National Science Foundation. February 28, 2012. p. 4. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
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