Jennie Patrick

Jennie Patrick (born 1949) is an American chemical engineer and educator. As a high school student, she participated in the integration of Alabama's public schools. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, she became one of the first African American women in the United States to earn a doctorate in traditional chemical engineering. Quotes Well, as early as elementary school, I knew I wanted to be involved in science somehow. Perhaps I did not totally understand the concept of what science was, but I knew that it offered many interesting and fascinating explanations to things that I did not understand. I had a science teacher that I found very interesting. And so, early on I thought I wanted to be a science teacher. I really enjoyed the educational challenges of my science classes. Such classes were fun to me, because I could better understand how things functioned. By the time I was in junior high school, I had decided I wanted to be a chemist. Other than the fact that I was a curious child, I did not…I cannot say I had a lot of early experiences with science. My basic personality made me very curious. Just wanted to understand why things were, and how things operated. Living in a rural setting allowed me to be very close to nature. The wonders of nature seemed to have fueled my desire even more so, to understand why things happened in a certain way. I realized very early in life that science would probably provide some of [the] answers to my many questions. For me, I was not frightened, but it was a very striking thing to see the anger, as we walked past the mob to enter the school. I recall very vividly to this day an incident where this student that was with me, began to cry and shake. And I said to him, “What’s wrong?” And he said, “I’m afraid.” And I said, “Well, you can’t be afraid because the mob will understand that you’re afraid and they will become even more vocal. External links