Twitter solves the mystery of Black woman scientist in 47-year-old photo

via http://punchng.com

Sheila Minor Huff’s sex and her skin colour seemed to be her undoing, despite her national achievements as a scientist.

Sheila’s case is reminiscent of some unsung Black professional women such as Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated the flight trajectories for Project Mercury and other missions; a supervisor with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Dorothy Vaughan; and NASA engineer, Mary Jackson, whose roles in America’s incursion into space only became common knowledge through the 2016 American biographical drama film, Hidden Figures.

Sheila had to wait a little bit more after the Hidden Figures for her own unveiling and well-deserved recognition.

So, when Candace Jean Andersen came across a photo of a group of people at a 1971 science conference in Virginia, she noticed that the only person who was unidentified in the caption was a Black woman.

Candace, who is a books illustrator, was doing some research for a children’s book on orcas (killer whales) when she stumbled into the mystery.

In an old article, she discovered a photo of scientists at the 1971 International Conference on the Biology of Whales in Virginia. And she noticed something: Amid the sea of male faces — 37 of them — was a lone woman, her face partially obscured.

The article named all the men, but the African-American woman was listed as “not identified.”

“Not identified, why? Who is she? What did she contribute to the conference? What’s her story?” Candace wondered.

She put down her picture book project and started looking.

“It bothered me for days not knowing who this woman was. If …

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