How a brilliant biologist was failed by science

How a brilliant biologist was failed by science Emmanuel Lafont Roger Arliner Young’s brilliance made her the first black woman in the US to hold a doctorate in zoology. Marine Biological Laboratory Archives As well as Young’s mentor, Ernest Just, shown here in 1925, was a towering figure in Howard University’s biology department “They’re both working at an HBCU, which was part of this project of racial uplift, that’s financially strapped and that’s trying to convince largely white funders to invest in them as a demonstration of black scientific excellence,” says Díaz. Marine Biological Laboratory Archives Frank Rattray Lillie was Young's advisor – and an advocate of eugenics and of the idea that people of colour were inferior When Díaz searched Lillie’s archive, she found a note Lillie had made about Young: he described her as having “unfit mental condition.” He saw her exam failure as evidence not that institutions and Just were failing Young, but that Young was mentally unwell and inherently unfit for scientific excellence. “But by framing it as her ‘violating rules’ or ‘being difficult’, it was his way of creating a paper trail to justify letting her go.” You seem to be making a deliberate effort to keep me from doing any research – Young Even though Young continued to return to Woods Hole for research and to present papers there, she found it difficult to make much progress amidst the deteriorating situation at Howard.