The Phi Beta Kappa Society (ΦΒΚ) is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded at the College of William and Mary in Virginia in December 1776. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and to induct outstanding students of arts and sciences at select American colleges and universities. Since its inception, its inducted members included later 17 United States presidents, 42 United States Supreme Court justices, and 136 Nobel laureates. Phi Beta Kappa (ΦΒΚ) stands for Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης, which means "Wisdom [lit. love of knowledge] is the guide [lit. helmsman] of life".
Percy Lavon Julian was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills.
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson was an American educator and pastor. He served as the first African-American president of Howard University, from 1926 until 1960. Johnson has been considered one of the three leading African-American preachers of the early 20th-century, along with Vernon Johns and Howard Thurman.
Charles Humphrey Atherton, an American Federalist politician, banker and a distinguished attorney from New Hampshire.
Edward Alexander Bouchet was an American physicist and educator and was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from any American university, completing his dissertation in physics at Yale University in 1876. On the basis of his academic record he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 1874, he became one of the first African Americans to graduate from Yale College.
William Henry Hastie Jr. was an American lawyer, judge, educator, public official, and civil rights advocate. He was the first African American to serve as Governor of the United States Virgin Islands, as a federal judge, and as a federal appellate judge. He served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and previously served as District Judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands.
Richard Marc Losick is an American molecular biologist. He is the Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology at Harvard University and a professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is especially noted for his investigations of endospore formation in Gram positive organisms such as Bacillus subtilis.
St Elmo Brady was an American chemist who was the first African American to obtain a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States. He received his doctorate at the University of Illinois in 1916.
Eva Beatrice Dykes was a prominent educator and the third black American woman to be awarded a PhD.
Roger R. Festa was a professor of chemistry at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri.
M Street High School, also known as Perry School, is a historic former school building located in the Northwest Quadrant of Washington, D.C. It has been listed on the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites since 1978 and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. The building escaped demolition with community support and the efforts of preservationists and is now a community center.
Will Mercer Cook, popularly known as Mercer Cook, was an American diplomat and professor. He was the first United States ambassador to the Gambia after it became independent, appointed in 1965 while also still serving as ambassador to Senegal. He was also the second American ambassador to Niger.
Oswald Tippo was an American botanist and educator. Tippo became the first chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1970.
Ann Cathleen Bermingham is an American art historian and educator. A specialist on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art, Bermingham is Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Anna Johnson Julian, born Anna Roselle Johnson was the first African-American woman awarded a PhD in sociology by the University of Pennsylvania (1937), a civic activist, and fourth national president of Delta Sigma Theta, a historically black sorority. In the 1930s, Julian studied factors inhibiting children's education and taught sociology at the University of the District of Columbia then known as Miner Teachers College. Her doctoral work was an analysis of the case records of 100 families receiving income support. She was married to prominent chemist, Percy Lavon Julian, from 1935 to his death in 1975, and had three children. The couple and their children faced down a violent and abusive campaign of intimidation when they moved into an upscale home in Oak Park, Chicago, with attacks on their home, including two fire bombings. The Julians founded the Chicago Chapter of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
John Charles Wahlke was an American political scientist.
Rick L. Danheiser is an American organic chemist and is the Arthur C. Cope Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chair of the MIT faculty. His research involves the invention of new methods for the synthesis of complex organic compounds. Danheiser is known for the Danheiser annulation and Danheiser benzannulation reactions.
Granville C. Coggs was an American medical doctor, radiologist, U.S. Army Air Force/U.S. Air Force/U.S. Air Force Reserves officer, and trained bombardier pilot with the 477th Bombardment Group attached to the famed Tuskegee Airmen. He was one of the 1007 documented Tuskegee Airmen Pilots.
Harold Delaney was a researcher, scholar, educator and collegiate administrative leader in the field of chemistry, known for his work on the Manhattan Project and atomic bomb. Delaney was one of the few African American chemists to work on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago.
