Hidden No More: Week 8 round-up
Emmett Chappelle
Chappelle is in the National Inventors Hall of Fame because of his work on bioluminescence, the light produced by living things. He discovered that a specific combination of chemicals causes a living organism to emit light.
Benjamin Banneker
Banneker published popular almanacs with times for sunrise, sunset, moon phases, and other celestial events. He also used astronomy to determine longitude and latitude when he helped survey the future capital, Washington, D.C., in 1791.
Alice Ball
Ball, a chemistry instructor at the College of Hawaii, improved a key treatment for leprosy (Hansen’s Disease). The “Ball Method” was used for decades. In 1916, a year after her discovery, Ball died. She was just 24 years old.
Edwin Caldwell
Caldwell graduated from Shaw University’s medical school in 1890. He was known in North Carolina and elsewhere for his unusual success in treating pellagra. White patients who needed this Black doctor’s help saw him quietly after dark.
Henrietta Lacks
When Lacks was treated for cancer in 1951, some of her cells were taken for research without her permission. Decades later, her family learned that the HeLa cell line made polio vaccinations and many other medical advances possible.