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.
Consider some of todayâs diverse trailblazers. Most had an Ivy league education at some point. Indra Nooyi, the first female of color to head a Fortune 500 company and Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic-origin Supreme court justice, both went to Yale. Even Obama, the first black president of the United States holds degrees from Columbia and Harvard.