The Black Mathematician Who Resisted Nuclear War
When J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. graduated from the University of Chicago in 1942 with a PhD in mathematics at the age of nineteen, he became one of the one half of 1 percent of Black men in the US with doctorates in his field. ... Wilkins then began working in private industry, helping to develop and design peaceful uses for nuclear materials, even returning to school for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at New York University [Tandon School of Engineering].
