Saint Elmo Brady was one of the first African Americans to obtain a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 degree in chemistry in the United States. He received the Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in chemistry at the University of Illinois

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

 in 1916 for work done in Noyes Laboratory.

Saint Elmo Brady was born on December 22, 1884 in Louisville, Kentucky. Greatly influenced by Thomas W. Talley, a pioneer in the teaching of science, he received his Bachelor's Degree from Fisk University

Fisk University

Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...

 in 1908 at the age of 24, and immediately began teaching at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. His outstanding abilities were acknowledged in 1912 when he was offered a scholarship to Illinois to engage in graduate studies.

Many years later, he told his students that when he went to graduate school, "they began with 20 whites and one other and ended, in 1916 with six whites and one other."

During his time at Illinois, Brady became the first African American admitted to Phi Lambda Upsilon

Phi Lambda Upsilon

Phi Lambda Upsilon National Honorary Chemical SocietyFounded in 1899 at the Noyes Laboratory of the University of Illinois. Phi Lambda Upsilon was the first honor society dedicated to scholarship in a single discipline, chemistry.-Objectives:...

, the chemistry honor society (1914) and was one of the first to be inducted into Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society is a non-profit honor society which was founded in 1886 at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a handful of graduate students. Members elect others on the basis of their research achievements or potential...

, the science honorary society (1915). In November 1916, The Crisis

The Crisis

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois , Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.The original title of the journal was...

 -- monthly magazine of the NAACP -- selected Brady for its biographical sketch as "Man of the Month".
Brady published three scholarly abstracts in Science in 1914-15 on his work with Derick. He also collaborated with Professor George Beal on a paper published in Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry titled, "The Hydrochloride Method for the Determination of Alkaloids." Professor Brady also authored three monographs on Household Chemistry for Girls.

Brady's legacy was his establishment of strong undergraduate curricula, graduate programs, and fund raising development for four historically black colleges and universities. In conjunction with faculty from the University of Illinois, he established a summer program in infrared spectroscopy

Infrared spectroscopy

Infrared spectroscopy is the spectroscopy that deals with the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, that is light with a longer wavelength and lower frequency than visible light. It covers a range of techniques, mostly based on absorption spectroscopy. As with all spectroscopic...

, which was open to faculty from all colleges and universities. He served Tuskegee (1916–1920), Howard University

Howard University

Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...

 in Washington DC (1920–27), Fisk University (1927–52), and Tougaloo College, following his retirement from Fisk.

See also

• Percy Lavon Julian - second African-American to obtain a PhD in chemistry.