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Celebrating the Accomplishments of Black Americans
Roger Arliner Young (1889–1964): First African American Woman to Receive a Doctorate in Zoology
Roger Arliner Young was the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in zoology, after years of juggling research and teaching with the burden of caring for her invalid mother and struggling with her own mental health problems. Her story is one of grit and perseverance.
Young, from Burgettstown , Pennsylvania , entered Howard University in 1916, at age 25. In 1921, she took her first science course. She'd found the work she loved. Dr. Ernest Just, a prominent black biologist and head of the Zoology department at Howard, became her mentor, and she graduated in 1923.
The following year, Dr. Just helped Young find funding to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago . There, she was asked to join Sigma Xi, an unusual honor for a master's student. Her first article, “On the Excretory Apparatus in Paramecium,” appeared in Science in September 1924. She obtained her master's degree in 1926.
The next year, Young began working with Dr. Just during the summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts , assisting him with research on the fertilization process in marine organisms. She also worked on the processes of hydration and dehydration in living cells. Her expertise grew, and Dr. Just called her a “real genius in zoology.”
Beginning in 1929, Young stood in for Dr. Just as head of the Howard zoology department when he made trips to Europe to work on projects. Young began her Ph.D. under the direction of Dr. Frank Lillie, the embryologist who had been Dr. Just's mentor at Woods Hole.
When she failed her qualifying exams in January 1930, she was devastated. She was broke and still had to care for her mother. She left without letting anyone know where she would be. Dr. Lillie, deeply concerned, wrote the president of Howard about her mental condition.
Eventually, Young returned to Howard to teach and to work at Woods Hole in the summers, but her relationship with Dr. Just cooled considerably. He began easing her out of her position in 1933, and in 1936 she was fired, ostensibly for missing classes and mistreating lab equipment.
The next summer, Young began her doctorate again, this time at the University of Pennsylvania , under Dr. L. V. Heilbrunn, who had befriended her at Woods Hole and gave her the aid she needed to continue. She earned her Ph.D. in 1940.
Although Dr. Young then took an assistant professorship at the North Carolina College for Negroes in Raleigh , her mental stability worsened. She worked short contracts in Texas and at Jackson State College in Mississippi . While in Mississippi in the late 1950s, she was hospitalized at the State Mental Asylum until 1962. She then began teaching at Southern University in New Orleans . She died, poor and alone, on November 9, 1964.
Despite the difficulties with her mental health, Dr. Young carried out many studies in the hydration and dehydration of living cells, on the effects of direct and indirect radiation on sea urchin eggs, and on the structures that control the salt concentration in paramecium. She published several books and four papers between 1935 and 1938 about her findings.
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