An element is a chemical substance made up of a particular kind of atom and hence cannot be broken down or transformed by a chemical reaction into a different element, though it can be transmuted into another element through a nuclear reaction.
Almost 40 years separate Shirley Ann Jackson's achievement, as the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in theoretical high energy physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Jedidah Isler, the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Yale.
William Parham, College of Law, was the first African-American graduate of the University of Cincinnati in 1874. Research biologist and educator Charles Henry Turner, who received his masterâs in 1892, was the first African American to earn a graduate degree (of any kind) at UC. In 1928, Jennie Davis Porter became the first African-American woman to earn a PhD at UC. She received national acclaim for her educational methods as principal of Cincinnatiâs Stowe School. Lucy Oxley received an MD and became the first African-American graduate of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1935.