Samuel P. Massie

(1919 - 2005)

Chemist

Samuel P. Massie Image Credit: Special Collections & Archives Department, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy

Samuel P. Massie was the first African American professor of chemistry at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he served on the faculty from 1966 to 1994, and the first to head its chemistry department. As widely recognized for his efforts to encourage young people in the sciences as for his scientific achievement, Dr. Massie received the Dreyfuss Award from the American Chemical Society in March 1996 for his work in developing future careers in chemistry. In 1994 the U.S. Department of Energy joined AIME, a coalition of Fortune 100 companies, in establishing a Samuel P. Massie Chair of Excellence in Environmental Sciences at each of the ten historically black college and university engineering schools. Dr. Massie’s research contributed to drugs to combat malaria, cancer, and other diseases, and his 1954 Chemical Reviews article, “The Chemistry of Phenothiazine,” is considered a classic in the field. Chemical and Engineering News ranked him among the top seventy-five chemists of the twentieth century. Dr. Massie was vice president of Bingwa Software Company, which develops curricula using multicultural models.

Links to Additional Information

Profile from Dr. Samuel P. Massie Chairs of Excellence

Biography from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture

Biography from BlackPast.org