The Olio also praised the athleticism of another Dunbar-Amherst track star,
Robert Percy Barnes. 46 Barnes graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1921, and the college appointed him as a chemistry instructor after his graduation. This would technically situate Barnes as the first African American member of the Amherst faculty. Amherst would not hire a black faculty member for a tenure-track professorship until the arrival of Dr. James Q. Denton in 1964.Robert Percy Barnes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 26 February 1898 Shiloh, Maryland |
| Died | 18 March 1990 |
| Alma mater | Amherst College Harvard University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Howard University |
| Thesis | The reactions and keto-enol equilibria of an alpha diketone |
| Doctoral advisor | Elmer P. Kohler |
| Notable students | Harold Delaney |
Robert Percy Barnes (February 26, 1898 - March 18, 1990) was an American chemist and professor, and the first African American to graduate with a PhD in chemistry from Harvard University. He was also the first African American faculty member hired at Amherst College.[1]
Robert Percy Barnes was born on February 26, 1898, in Shiloh, Maryland. His parents were Mary Jane Thomas and Reverend William Humphrey Barnes, and he was the second of four brothers.[2]
Barnes attended the M Street High School (now Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C., which was one of the first high schools for African American students in the country. While at Dunbar, one of his teachers was Jane Eleanor Datcher, who was the first African-American woman to earn an advanced degree from Cornell University.[3] He then went on to study at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, for his undergraduate studies. While at Amherst, he ran track and field. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1921, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.[4]
Following graduation, Barnes was appointed a chemistry instructor at Amherst, making him the first African American member of the faculty there.[5] The college wouldn't hire a tenure-track faculty member until James Q. Denton in 1964.[6]
In 1922, Barnes was hired at Howard University in Washington, D.C., as a faculty member in the chemistry department. While at Howard, one of his doctoral students was Harold Delaney, who later went on to work as a chemist on the Manhattan Project.[7] In 1945, Barnes was made a full professor at Howard, where he would teach until 1968. He also served as head of the chemistry department in the 1950s.[8] Over the course of his career there, he advanced the chemistry department from a masters-only program to granting doctoral degrees.[9]
Barnes, along with fellow professors Roscoe McKinney, Sterling Brown, and Mercer Cook, charted Phi Beta Kappa at Howard, and all were also members of the Gamma chapter of Omega Psi Phi, which was founded at Howard in 1911. In the 1940s, he was selected for a government program to study explosives at the onset of World War II. He also led an intensive course at Howard funded by the National Defense Program that was the only program in the country of its type for African American students.[9]
Barnes taught at Howard until his retirement in 1967.[10]
As he began his teaching career, Barnes also began his doctoral studies at Harvard University. His studies were funded in part by a four-year fellowship funded by the General Education Board. He earned his master's degree in chemistry in 1931 and his PhD in 1933. Upon receiving his degree, he became the first African American person to receive a PhD in chemistry at Harvard. His doctoral advisor was Elmer P. Kohler, and he likely also studied with James B. Conant.[10] His thesis was titled "The reactions and keto-enol equilibria of an alpha diketone."[11]
Following the passage of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, in 1950, President Harry Truman named Barnes as a member of the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation. Barnes was one of two African American members of the board at this point, along with John Warren Davis from West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University).[12] In 1952, Truman reappointed Barnes to the board, along with seven other scientists.[13] He remained on the Board until 1958.
Barnes' research primarily focused on the chemistry of diketone molecules, and he published in numerous outlets, including the Journal of the American Chemical Society and The Journal of Organic Chemistry.[2]
Barnes married Ethel Hasbrook in 1922, and the couple later divorced. He married Florence Abrams Barnes in 1933, and the couple was married until her death in 1981. Outside of work, he was a bridge player and a member of the Anglers All Fishing Club.[14]
CCB Spotlight: Robert Percy Barnes, M.S. '31 Ph.D. '33
This article is a part of "CCB Spotlight," a new ongoing series of articles that will report on achievements in research, education, career development, and community development among students, alumni, faculty, staff, groups and wider members of the chemistry and chemical biology community at Harvard. To nominate an individual and or a group to be spotlighted, please complete this short form or reach out to Communications Manager Yahya Chaudhry.
In honor of Black History Month, this article profiles alumnus Robert Percy Barnes, M.S. '31 Ph.D. '33 -- the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard who went on to teach at Howard University and become a boardmember of the National Science Foundation.
Early Life:
Robert Percy Barnes was born in Shiloh, Maryland, on February 26, 1898 to Mary Jane Thomas and Reverend William Humphrey Barnes. Growing up, Barnes attended the M Street High School, one of the nation's first high schools for African Americans, which represented an important development of Washington's education system. The M Street High School, which was renamed the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in 1918 was “the jewel in the crown of the black school system” in Washington, DC, during the age of segregation. Dunbar’s teachers included several notable experts in their fields in part because of the limited professional opportunities for African Americans. Dunbar became “the place to go if you thought you were college material and wanted to be prepared to go,” and provided Barnes with a rigorous education that served him well as an undergraduate at Amherst College, a liberal arts college in Massachusetts. At Amherst, Barnes was both a star student in chemistry and a star athlete. The Olio, Amherst College's Yearbook, praised Barnes' success in track and field. Barnes graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his bachelors in 1921, and was appointed as a chemistry instructor after his graduation. Hence, Barnes was the first African American member of the Amherst faculty. In 1922, he accepted a faculty position at Howard University, a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) located in Washington, DC. While teaching chemistry at Howard University, Barnes obtained a Fellowship (1928-1931) from the General Education Board, a philanthropy founded by John D. Rockefeller, which allowed him to continue his education at Harvard University.
At Harvard:
Barnes earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1931 and 1933, respectively. Barnes likely took courses taught by Professor James B. Conant, the future President of Harvard University and U.S. Ambassador to West Germany, who was then the Chair of the Department. Conant's research focused on free radicals, the chemical structure of chlorophyll, and the quantitative study of organic reactions, which attracted a throng of talented graduate students who went on to have brilliant careers. Louis F. Fieser, who later became a professor of chemisty at Harvard and gained fame for his research on blood-clotting agents and napalm, completed his dissertation on the oxidation-reduction potential of quinones under Conant.
Barnes did extensive research on diktetones under the direction of well-respected organic chemist Professor Elmer P. Kohler, who was renowned for the creativity of his lab, his skill in fractional crystallization, and his interest "in the mechanisms of organic reactions, an unusual interest in a period in which structural chemistry predominated." About a decade earlier, Kohler had also taught Percy Lavon Julian, an African American organic chemist who would go on to have a successful career industry. In 1933, Barnes became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard. Kohler would continue to advise Barnes after he graduated. In 1934 Barnes and Kohler published a peer-reviewed article in the prestigious Journal of American Chemical Society, "The Tautomerism of Alpha Diketones. I. Benzyl Phenyl Diketone."
Career:
Barnes , became a full professor at Howard University in 1945, mentoring several African American chemistry graduate students including Lewis A. Gist Jr., Harold Delaney and George W. Reed. Delaney and Reed published their research efforts with Barnes in JACS. Both, Delaney and Reed also worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II at University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory, which led to the development of the atomic bomb. Barnes also mentored African American women chemistry graduate students at Howard University, publishing articles with Leila S. Green and Gladys E. Pickney, who went on to work as a chemistry associate in Howard's chemistry department in the 1950s.
National Science Board:
In 1950, President Harry Truman appointed Barnes to the Board of the National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent federal agency which had been established by the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 "to promote the progress of science, to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare, and to secure the national defense." The 24-member board consisted of "persons eminent in the fields of basic sciences, medical science, engineering, agriculture, education and public affairs" from across the country. At its initial meeting at the White House in December 1950, the board elected James B. Conant as the Chair of the Board. In its first annual report, the Board stated that the agency was established in a "present emergency," requiring the NSF to become operationally ready to survey and help lead the country's science program's at the beginning of the Cold War. Barnes was a member of the Board until 1958.
Legacy:
Barnes retired from Howard University in 1967. As a researcher, he published dozens of papers in high-impact journals about his work in organic chemistry. Throughout his career as an educator and promotor of science education, he mentored a generation of African American chemistry students at Howard University, who went on to earn advanced degrees, conduct impactful research, work on the most challenging problems of their day, and continue the tradition of African American excellence in chemistry. Barnes died on March 18, 1990 at his home in Washington, DC at the age of 92.
Sources/Additional Information:
- https://chemistry.howard.edu/sites/chemistry.coas.howard.edu/files/2021-...
- https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=...
- https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2021-fall/your-lif...
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11873533.12?seq=1#metadata_inf...
- http://gamma1916.com/2018/02/barnes/
- https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/ann_report_first.pdf
- https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1952/b_1952.pdf
- http://acshist.scs.illinois.edu/bulletin_open_access/v40-1/v40-1%20p37-3...
- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/delaney-harold-1919-1...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/03/22/joseph-sebes-jes...
- England, J. M. (1982). A Patron for Pure Science: The National Science Foundation's Formative Years, 1945-57. United States: National Science Foundation.
- Long, D., Spangenburg, R., Moser, D. (2014). African Americans in Science, Math, and Invention. United States: Facts On File, Incorporated.
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By Brother David L. Carl
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Bro. Barnes appointed by Pres. Truman to the National Science Foundation Board.
A Phi Beta Kappa scholar at Amherst College, he became the first Black professor to join their faculty. As Harvard’s first Black Ph.D. in chemistry, he returned to Washington to head the chemistry department at Howard. He mentored many of the Black chemistry students who would later earn doctorates.
He chartered the Phi Beta Kappa Chapter at Howard University with his fellow Gamma Chapter brothers, professors Roscoe McKinney, Sterling Brown, and William Mercer Cook. He then advanced a department which had only begun offering masters level course when he arrived, to a program which confer doctoral degrees. Both these accomplishments marked the firsts for any HBCU.
A prolific researcher, he published over 40 papers in high-impact scientific journals. In preparation for WWII, the US selected Barnes as 1 of 16 expert chemists for a defense post to study explosives. He again returned to Howard and led an unprecedented special intensive short term course funded by the National Defense Program, the only such offering by the government to Colored students. President Truman appointed him to the founding board of the National Science Foundation (NSF), 1 of 24 scientists (not just chemists) in 1950, a position he held for 8 years.
His stellar career and achievements in academia are even more remarkable given the limited resources available for his research efforts before the landmarks of the modern civil rights movement.
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