Despite Alice Ball’s extraordinary accomplishment and contribution to medicine at such a young age, it took decades for her to receive acknowledgment for her groundbreaking work in the treatment of Hansen’s disease.
Dr. Kathryn Takara, who studied at the University of Hawaii, and Stan Ali, whose attention was caught by the mention of Alice Ball in a book published in 1932, are the two persons who revisited the historical record and insisted on giving Alice Ball the recognition she deserved.
Finally, in 2000, the University of Hawaii-Mānoa placed a bronze plaque in front of a chaulmoogra tree on campus to honor Ball’s life and her important discovery. At the same time, February 29 was declared “Alice Ball Day.” In 2007, the University of Hawaii posthumously awarded her with the Regents’ Medal of Distinction.
29 – George Edward Alcorn, Jr.: inventor
Source: NASA/Goddard/Debora McCallum via AAHP
George Edward Alcorn Jr.’s invention, the Imagining X-Ray Spectrometer, earned him the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Inventor of the Year in 1984 for his contribution to scientific research.
George Edward Alcorn Jr. was born on March 22, 1940. He attended Occidental College in Pasadena, California graduating with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1962.
In 1963, Alcorn completed a master’s degree in nuclear physics from Howard University. Alcorn worked as a research engineer for the Space Division of North American Rockwell, computing trajectories, and orbital mechanics during the summers of 1962 and 1963.
After Alcorn earned his doctorate in atomic and molecular physics from Howard University in 1967, he spent 12 years in industry as a senior scientist at Philco-Ford, a senior physicist at Parker-Elmer, and an advisory engineer at IBM Corporation.
