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.
America's first black female psychologist. Despite the odds, Inez Beverly Prosser earned her doctorate in psychology 75 years ago and went on to do historic work, though her life was abruptly cut short. By Ludy T. Benjamin Jr., PhD . 2008, Vol 39, No. 10. Print version: page 20