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.
In the same year, Howard University Law School becomes the United Statesâ first Black law school. 1870 Susan McKinney Steward graduates as class valedictorian from the New York Medical College for Women, becoming the first Black woman in the state to earn a medical degree.