Celebrating Black History Month: Lloyd Ferguson, first African-American to receive a doctorate in chemistry

Lloyd Noel Ferguson, born February 9, 1918, is the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1943.  He took a faculty position at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College and then moved to Howard University about two years later.  There he founded the doctoral program, the first at any black college.

In the 1960s, he became an advisory to the Food and Drug Administration.  In 1972, he became one of  the founders of  the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE).

He retired in 1986 and passed away in 2011.