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.
1872 William Henry Fitzbutler becomes the first African American to graduate from the U of M Medical School. 1874 Edward Alexander Bouchet becomes the first African American to receive a Bachelors Degree from Yale University. He ranks 6th in a class of 124 students.