Black women will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the first time

by By Scottie Andrew, CNN

The National Inventors Hall of Fame lineup is full of familiar faces: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers and Eli Whitney, along with many other mostly White men.Joining them in the next class of inductees are two Black women inventors who changed the way we work and see.

Marian Croak and the late Dr. Patricia Bath will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, alongside the inventors of the sports bra, ibuprofen and the Super Soaker toy. They’re the first two Black women to earn a spot in the Hall of Fame.

Croak, now a vice president at Google, developed Voice over Internet Protocol, the technology that’s made working from home possible for many. And Bath created the Laserphaco Probe, a device used during surgery to easily remove cataracts.

Their induction is “bittersweet,” said Erika Jefferson, the founder of the organization Black Women in Science and Engineering (BWISE). While both women made incredible strides in the male-dominated field of STEM, Bath isn’t alive to receive the honor. And that it took the National…

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