Ronald E. Mickens Collection Now Online

The AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives is thrilled to announce that the Ronald E. Mickens Collection on African-American Physicists is now available on our digital repository. This is one of our most requested collections, and we are pleased to make it widely accessible for the first time thanks to a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Here, I’ll give a brief background on Dr. Mickens and how the collection came to be, then highlight some of the features of the collection.

Ronald E. Mickens

Ronald Elbert Mickens was born February 7, 1943, in segregated Petersburg, VA, just south of Richmond. He grew up curious, with a penchant for tinkering and learning, and he loved to read. He would visit the Petersburg Public Library (using the “colored” entrance) to check out texts on math and physics, as well as biographies and autobiographies of scientists, which sparked a lifelong interest in uncovering how scientists became scientists.

Mickens excelled in school. His all-Black high school, Peabody High School, was a top-rated program; most of his teachers held master’s degrees and went on to teach at colleges when the Petersburg schools were desegregated. After graduation, he went on to get a degree in physics at Fisk University, although he also studied chemistry and math. He graduated in 1964 and headed to Vanderbilt University to get a PhD in theoretical physics (1968).

Following a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, Mickens returned to Fisk, where he taught in the physics department from 1970-1981. A sabbatical in 1978 sent him to Morehouse University, where he spent much of his time helping to establish the physics department at nearby Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University). Mickens resigned from Fisk and joined CAU in 1982. Three years later he was appointed the Fuller E. Callaway Professor, a position he held until his retirement as Distinguished Professor in 2020.

Alongside his love of science, Mickens has had a longstanding interest in the history of science, sparked by those early biographies he checked out from the library. In particular, he is interested in the people often overlooked by historians, especially Black scientists. He wrote the actual book on Edward Bouchet , the first Black person to receive a PhD in physics (Yale, 1876), and he has devoted much of his spare time to promoting and preserving the work of fellow Black physicists.

Ronald E. Mickens collection on African American physicists

This brings us to the Mickens collection on African American physicists , which consists in large part of biographical files for sixty-one prominent Black physicists. The bulk of the files were collected as part of an exhibit on Black physicists, but some were collected as research for obituary announcements or articles and others as part of an effort to ensure materials about Black scientists were kept in the historical (archival) record.

The African American Presence in Physics

In 1999, the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) prepared an exhibit on Black physicists to be included in the American Physical Society’s centennial celebration the following year. Mickens, as the historian of the NSBP at the time, also edited an accompanying pamphlet, “The African-American Presence in Physics.” In the process of creating those materials, Mickens identified nearly fifty Black researchers, administrators, educators, and other professionals, and contacted those who were still alive via Kathy Mitchell at Horton Lind Communications and Public Relations, who produced the exhibit. Each person was asked to provide a 150-word summary of their contributions to physics, a CV, and two to three photographs.

The resulting documents offer a unique glimpse into how these physicists wanted to be portrayed, or not—some people declined to be included. Some kept their materials strictly professional, such as Dr. Shirley Jackson , who communicated solely through her personal assistant at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, on USNRC letterhead with USNRC cover sheets. Others included little bits of their personalities and interests, tucked away at the bottom of their CVs; for example, Dr. Hattie Carwell’s resume notes that she likes gardening and collecting international dolls, and Dr. Warren Buck included that he was an Eagle Scout, a member of the Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club in the Bahamas, open water scuba certified, and a gold medalist in the 1963 Penn Relays. Still others are a bit intimidating, like Dr. Walter Massey , President of Morehouse College, whose CV lists twenty-two (!) honorary PhDs and his experience on the boards of directors of small, definitely not well-known arts organizations like the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (to name just a few).

Some of the physicists chosen by Mickens had already passed away at the time of the exhibit. For these, Mickens requested materials from various archives, drew on his own research notes, and contacted family members and colleagues. One notable example is the file on astronaut Dr. Ronald McNair , one of the crew who tragically perished in the Challenger disaster in 1986. Mickens, who had known McNair since they were both at MIT in the 1970s, reached out to Cheryl McNair, who sent a wealth of materials about her late husband. These included some excellent NASA photographs and two of McNair’s shuttle patches.

Obituaries and Articles

In addition to the materials collected for the NSBP exhibit, Mickens’ collection also includes files on people for whom he wrote obituaries to be published in Physics Today, as well as other articles. These files consist of extensive research conducted by Mickens, including communications with colleagues and family members of the deceased.

Dr. Willie Hobbs Moore’s file in particular is dense with research notes, correspondence, articles, and more. It includes part of Moore’s dissertation, which made her the first Black woman to receive a PhD in physics (University of Michigan, 1972), as well as photos provided by her husband, Sidney Moore. Mickens’ research on Moore culminated in an essay published in Notable Black American Women (Vol. 3), edited by Jesse Carney Smith. (From the file, it looks like Moore was also supposed to be featured in the NSBP exhibit, but there was not enough information about her available in time to include her.)

Archival Representation

Finally, as the historian of the NSBP, Mickens was interested in ensuring that the life and work of Black physicists would be documented for posterity. To that end, he reached out to various scientists to gather materials to be deposited in archives around the country. He sent each person a letter explaining his project and asking them to fill out a detailed questionnaire that covered biographical and career information.

A few people went above and beyond what was requested of them and delivered quasi-memoirs. In Dr. Lionel Senhouse’s file , for instance, we find a partially completed questionnaire, and then a typewritten, multi-page letter that begins,

We love a ramble. Dr. Senhouse goes on to share some truly wild tales from his childhood, which certainly would have been difficult to capture on a standard form, and connect them to his professional life. (To skip straight to the stories, start on page 14 of the file.)

Related Collections

I have barely scratched the surface of the materials in the Mickens Collection, and I strongly encourage you to visit our digital repository to explore the files for yourself.

If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Mickens and his work, please check out the following related collections and resources from AIP:

• Ron Mickens Image Collection . Over the past several years, Dr. Mickens has also sent us a large collection of personal photos documenting his life and career. The most recent installation, received in 2023 and a few of which were included in this post, will be available on our repository in the coming weeks.
• Ron Mickens Oral History Interview, August 2020 . In August of 2020, Dr. Mickens sat down (virtually) with David Zierler of AIP for a wide-ranging interview. This interview was featured in our most recent “Stories of Black Physicists” blog post.
• The genesis of the National Society of Black Physicists [undated] . This short, unpublished manuscript recounts Dr. Mickens’ role in the founding of the NSBP. While not yet available online, interested readers can contact us at nbl@aip.org for access.
• Initial Conditions: A Science History Podcast. Did you know that AIP (briefly) had a podcast? Now you do! Episode 7 , episode 8 , and their accompanying behind-the-scenes blog posts covered Black physicists, drawing extensively on the Mickens collection and interviews with Dr. Mickens himself.