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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33064 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I found this an interesting exercise, so here's who I was able to come up with:

  1. Norbert Rillieux, inventor of the multiple effect-evaporator used in industrial sugar production.

  2. Percy Julian, pioneer of chemical synthesis of steroids and hormonal drugs.

  3. John Hodge, who determined the mechanism of the Maillard reaction in cooking.

  4. John Dabiri, developer of advanced wind turbines and some weird jellyfish-inspired soft robots

  5. George Carruthers, inventor of the ultraviolet camera deployed on the Moon by Apollo 16

  6. Arlie Petters, developer of the mathematical theory of gravitational lensing

  7. Alexander Anim-Mensah, whose contributions to membrane engineering are quite opaque to me, but seem to be quite significant in the areas of water filtration and improvement of washing machines

  8. Mark Dean, who holds an impressive number of patents in computer hardware and processor design

  9. Charles Drew, who achievements in blood plasma storage enabled the development of the first large-scale blood banks during WWII

  10. Kristala Prather, one of the major figures in the infant field of synthetic biology

I tried to limit this list as much as I could to the harder sciences and to leave out anyone whose contributions or lack thereof are at the center of a major controversy, which narrowed it down considerably. You are free to point out that this list includes mostly highly selected African immigrants or people with so little black ancestry that no one but an American would label them as such.

Thanks! This is a much better answer.

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