World War II chemist, Dr. Samuel P. Massie, Jr., is noted for his work on uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb. Massie was born on July 3, 1919 in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was clear from a very young age that he was a genius. His parents were teachers and encouraged his gifted mind and love of academics. He was reading at age two. By the age of 10, he was already in high school. Massie graduated from Dunbar High School in Little Rock at the age of 13 in 1932. Because of his age and family finances, he worked in a grocery store for a year before enrolling in Dunbar Junior College in Little Rock. He was elected student body president in 1935 and graduated with an associate degree.
After working hard to save money to attend the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Samuel P. Massie, Jr. was declined admission because he was Black. He turned to University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1936, majoring in chemistry. He graduated college two years later at the age of 18 earning his bachelor’s in science and was summa cum laude in 1938. After getting a degree from UAPB, he earned a master's degree in chemistry from Fisk University in Tennessee in 1940. Now just 21, he returned to Arkansas AM&N, and taught a year at the university as a professor of math and physics. Then Massie then turned his sights to Iowa State University, the same school that George Washington Carver attended, and enrolled in its doctoral program.
His supervisor was Henry Gilman, father of organometallic chemistry, who was working on the Manhattan Project. Racial segregation at the university prevented him from living on campus, so he had to hitch hike to class because housing for Blacks was over three miles from campus. Bigotry and racial discrimination did not make Samuel P. Massie, Jr’s life easy at Iowa. He noted that he was assigned to a separate lab space “next to the rats in the basement”. Dr. Massie and the lab rats shared a space in the basement of the school until he proved himself worthy to be among the White students. The outbreak of World War II changed Massie’s life. Because of his status as a chemist pursuing a doctorate, he was exempt from the draft.
His professor, Dr. Henry Gilman, brought Massie in to joined a special research team at Iowa State working on the Manhattan Project. He conducted pioneering silicon chemistry research and investigated antibacterial agents. Massie worked in the Ames Laboratory, researching the conversion of uranium isotopes into liquid compounds that could be used in the atomic bomb. He worked on the Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945. In 1946, Massie received his PhD in organic chemistry at Iowa State which involved testing compounds for therapeutic activity. Numerous teaching positions followed, but accepted a professorship at Fisk.
Massie had already published seven research papers with Gilman in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. After Fisk, Massie joined the faculty of Langston University in Oklahoma, where he taught from 1947 to 1953, and was named chairman of the chemistry department. Massie became president of the Oklahoma Academy of Science in 1953 at a time when Oklahoma schools and universities were still segregated. He returned to Fisk in 1953, where he taught until 1960 and continued his research of phenothiazine, which was used in treating psychiatric disorders and in cancer therapy.
In 1954, he wrote a landmark article on the subject, called “The Chemistry of Phenothiazine,” an article in Chemical Review. It led to a breakthrough by French chemists in development of the anti-psychotic drug Thorazine. Work followed at the National Science Foundation and Howard University in Washington DC in the early 1960s. He was assigned the role of Associate Program Director for Special Projects in Science Education at (NSF), helping improve college laboratories nationwide. The Manufacturing Chemists Association recognized Massie in 1961 as one of the six best chemistry teachers in America. From 1963 to 1966, Massie was president of what was then North Carolina College at Durham.
President Lyndon B. Johnson then tapped him for a chemistry professorship at the United States Naval Academy. He made history as the first Black faculty member of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1966. Despite his prominent role, Massie faced discrimination in Annapolis, where real estate agents refused to show him homes. He eventually settled in Laurel, Maryland, more than 25 miles from campus. He continued his research into organic chemistry and expanded his interests into the study of the environment. Massie quickly became one of the academy midshipmen’s favorite teachers. By 1977 he became the first African American to head its chemistry department. He later helped establish a Black studies program at the academy.
Massie remained at the academy for nearly 30 years, until his retirement as a professor emeritus in 1993. Along with two midshipmen and colleagues from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, he was awarded a patent for chemical agents effective in battling gonorrhea in 1984. His other work at the Naval Academy involved developing foaming agents that protected troops from poisonous gas, studying how chemicals used on ships impact marine wildlife, researching drugs for infectious diseases, and much more. Massie was passionate about educating the next generation of scientists and served on the Maryland State Board of Community Colleges, which he chaired for 10 years.
For more than two decades, he fought for science education funding. The board established the Massie Science Prize for outstanding community college science students in honor of his efforts. In 1990, he won the Naval Academy’s faculty achievement award and became the first African American to be recognized as an honorary member of the National Naval Officers Association. In 1992, the Samuel P. Massie Educational Endowment Fund was established on his behalf to provide scholarships for students in Maryland. Naval Academy students who were touched by his work named him an honorary alumnus in 1993.
To honor Massie’s legacy and his important contributions to science, the Energy Department established the Dr. Samuel P. Massie Chair of Excellence in 1994. The grant program helped students at historically Black colleges and predominantly Hispanic colleges conduct important environmental research, launch their careers, and pursue their dreams. In 1998, Massie was named one of the 75 greatest chemists of all time, alongside Marie Curie, George Washington Carver, Linus Pauling, and DNA pioneers James Watson and Francis Crick, by the journal Chemical and Engineering News. He published his autobiography, "Catalyst: The Autobiography of an American Chemist" in 2004.