She was the first Black woman to earn a graduate degree in physics and she was recruited to work on the Dayton Project, a division of the Manhattan Project. Carolyn Beatrice Parker was born in Gainesville, Florida on November 18, 1917. During the Great Depression, the family moved to Tampa. Carolyn started school at Middleton High School. She then became a secondary school teacher in Rochelle, Florida to earn and save money for college. In 1934, Carolyn Beatrice Parker entered Fisk University and selected physics as her major. The Department of Physics was chaired by Dr. Elmer S. Imes, the second African American to receive the doctorate in physics.
Carolyn Beatrice Parker graduated from Fisk University in 1938 with an undergraduate degree in physics, receiving the honor of magna cum laude. She wanted to attend graduate school to obtain an advanced degree in either physics or mathematics. Her advisor at Fisk, Dr. Elmer S. Imes suggested the University of Michigan, where he had obtained his doctorate in physics in 1918. However, no funding was available for her from Michigan and neither she nor her family could support her for this endeavor. At this point, Carolyn decided to work and save money for future graduate studies. Carolyn taught high school in Gainesville, Florida, from 1939 to 1940, and Newport News, Virginia, from 1941 to 1942.
For the summers of 1939 and 1940, she took courses at the University of Michigan and spent a full academic year on that campus to complete the requirements for the MA (Master of Arts) degree in Mathematics, which she received in May 1941. In the summer of 1942, Carolyn received an offer to teach at Bluefield State College in Bluefield, West Virginia. She was an instructor in physics and mathematics at Bluefield State College from 1942 to 1943. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, the United States declared war on Japan. Several days later, Germany declared war on the United States and this declaration was reciprocated soon after by the US government.
Ms. Parker did her patriotic duty in helping the United States win the war, using her brilliant scientific talents and analysis. Carolyn had skills in the use of electronic testing equipment, infrared spectroscopy, and advanced applied mathematical techniques. Soon, Carolyn Parker was recruited from her teaching position at Bluefield State College to begin work as a research physicist with the top-secret Dayton Project at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Project was part of the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons in World War II, and continuing into the Cold War. She was the only Black woman and one of two women in the Engineering Division.
The Monsanto Chemical Company led top-secret research the highly radioactive material Polonium as the initiator for atomic explosions. She faced significant racism and sexism. The critical importance of the Dayton Project, in conjunction with its top secrecy, made it very difficult to determine exactly what Carolyn did at the site. All of the “recruits” had to sign on to the Dayton Project without knowing the nature of the work. Everyone hired had to sign the Espionage Act and their backgrounds were investigated by the FBI. Aside from a small number of individuals at the highest levels, most researchers on the Manhattan Project were not aware that their work would be used to produce an atomic weapon.
Nor were they aware that it would be deployed against Japan instead of Nazi Germany. Towards the end of time of her time on the Dayton Project, from 1946 to 1947, Parker undertook further studies, taking physics and mathematics courses at Ohio State University. With her work on the Dayton Project winding down she now had time to begin her academic studies anew. Carolyn was ready and available for other opportunities and these came by way of an offer to teach at Fisk University. Her mentor, Dr. Elmer Samuel Imes, the founder of the Physics Department at Fisk University and its first Chair, died in December 1941. The President of Fisk, the renowned sociologist Dr. Charles Spurgeon Johnson immediately contacted Dr. James Raymond Lawson as a replacement for Imes.
Lawson arrived at Fisk in 1942 and quickly began efforts to create a research program in infrared spectroscopy with the aid of the Chemistry Department. To enhance and carry out his plans for research, Lawson needed additional faculty. This led to extensive correspondence with Carolyn Beatrice Parker on her interest in returning to Fisk as a faculty member and researcher. He clearly understood the significance of her work with the Manhattan Project and how her experimental skills could greatly benefit the research he intended to do, along with her, the graduate students, and other faculty and staff. Dr. Charles Johnson made an offer to Carolyn, and in the fall of 1947, Parker became an assistant professor of physics at Fisk University in Tennessee.
After four years at Fisk, Carolyn realized that if she was to realize her full potential as a teacher and researcher, she would need to acquire the doctorate degree. Using her contacts from the Dayton Project and with the help of Dr. Lawson, she applied to the Graduate Physics Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was accepted, but without financial support. Carolyn Beatrice Parker officially entered the Doctoral program in the MIT Physics Department on September 17, 1951. Her work was supervised by professor David H. Frisch, an alumnus of the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos site.
Carolyn completed a second master’s degree in physics on September 13, 1953, making her the first known Black woman with a postgraduate degree in physics in 1953. Interestingly, while Carolyn was admitted as a doctoral student in 1951, she switched to a Master of Science seeking graduate student in March 1952. Carolyn did not continue on at MIT to complete the requirements for the doctorate degree in physics because of financial difficulties. One year after entering MIT, she began part time employment as a physicist in the Geophysics Research Division at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center, located near the MIT campus.
She did enroll for the fall term, September 20, 1954 to January 28, 1955, but this was her last time as a student in the graduate physics program. Carolyn never did defend her doctoral dissertaion. Probably beginning in the mid-1950s, Carolyn began to experience the early symptoms of illnesses which worsened with time. The after effects of exposure to organic solvents and radioactive materials from her involvement with the Dayton project were now manifesting themselves. She died of leukemia, which believed was from radiation-induced. Leukemia is regarded as a risk of occupational polonium exposure.