Carolyn Beatrice Parker’s (1917-1966) inspirational narrative as the first known African American woman to get a postgraduate degree in physics has been captured in numerous short, online biographies. Since Parker co-authored classified reports at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, her biographers have assumed that Parker worked on the Dayton Project, which was the division of the Manhattan Project that processed the polonium needed to make the first nuclear explosions. However, in this talk, I will discuss the importance of revisiting Black scientists’ narratives, especially those involved in governmental research, to uncover the realities of their scientific contributions and reposition their stories within the broader history of physics to better understand how race, gender, and class impact historical memory. While Parker’s contributions to physics were mostly practical, educational, and experimental, it does not diminish her contributions to physics and the history of physics. Parker’s story illuminates the intersectional barriers of a young Black woman who wanted to become a quantum physicist in the mid-20th century United States and illustrates how conventional notions of what counts as a scientific contribution curate the past.

Elizabeth Monroe, married Boggs (1913−1996), trained as a mathematician at Bryn Mawr, as a mathematical chemist at Cambridge, and as a theoretical chemist at Cornell, before joining the Manhattan Project at the Explosives Research Laboratory. Although her contributions to the fields of computational quantum chemistry, statistical mechanics, and explosives had lasting legacies, her scientific career nevertheless ended with World War II. The birth of her son, who suffered from severe developmental disabilities, prevented her from ever rejoining the research workforce. She pivoted instead to a remarkable life of public advocacy for people with disability, building on her scientific training to move research and policy forward. This presentation retraces how Monroe Boggs went from early quantum chemistry enthusiast to implosion researcher for the nuclear bomb, and then a key figure of the post-war disability rights movement.