Introduction

WHO SHOULD CONSIDER A CAREER IN SCIENCE?
Who should consider a career in a scientific field? The brief answer to the question is: those people who are curious, who ask “why” and “how”, who wonder and dream of possibilities. It’s also for those who wish to serve by improving conditions for individuals or mankind. There is room for all in the various fields of science.

The following teenagers would seem to be unlikely candidates for science careers, but their story will amaze you. Christian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan, Luis Aranda, and Oscar Vasquez were students at Carl Hayden Community High School in an economically poor section of Phoenix, Arizona. They entered a national underwater robot competition in 2005 and won, beating college teams of engineering students from universities like MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The team effort of these boys is an inspirational and amusing story by Joshua Davis in the April, 2005, issue of Wired Magazine. You can find it on the web.*

Females shouldn’t shy away from the sciences. In the fall of 2005, for the first time ever, women outnumbered men in post-graduate schools, getting certified in medicine, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, dentistry, and other fields.**

Women are making history in the sciences. One fifth of NASA’s 136 astronauts are women. Eileen Collins is the first woman to pilot a NASA space shuttle. She was also the commander of the space shuttle mission in August, 2005. She grew up in public housing in Elmira, New York, helped count up church collections, worked in a pizza parlor to earn money for flying lessons, got loans and scholarships to cover college expenses, majored in math and joined the Air Force.*** Sally Ride, who majored in physics, was America’s first woman in space.

An impressive spokesperson for women in the sciences is Dr. Naomi Halas, who along with Dr. Jennifer West, won the Nanotechnology Now award for the best discovery in 2003. Their discovery of gold coated nanoshells to treat cancer will revolutionize the way we fight cancer and other diseases. In an interview for NOVA, PBS television, she spoke of the equal number of women and men she has on her large laboratory team at Rice University.

Historically, we owe much to black scientists and inventors. Among them are George Washington Carver who worked with cotton and peanut crops, Lewis Latimer, who worked with Thomas Edison, Ernst Just who worked in cell biology, Percy Julian who developed chemicals from soybeans, and Charles Drew, who developed a practical method of storing blood in blood banks. Benjamin Benneker, Granville T. Woods and Jan Matztiger were also black inventors.

Today’s scientists include many African-Americans. James McLurkin, a computer scientist, developed a computer program that allows a hundred robots to communicate together to solve problems. Martin Culpepper, a mechanical engineer and teacher at MIT, is building nanomachines with his students. Hakeem Oluseyi, an astrophysicist and professor of physics, hopes to shed light on the makeup of “dark matter” by observing supernovae with a new telescope in space.****

Our country will need many young people in the various sciences and in social service fields. The opportunities are endless.

This book is meant to give young people a glimpse of what awaits them in a science career. It is not meant to be a comprehensive study of all the fields of science, only some that have been news worthy recently. It is the hope of the author that this book will stimulate young people to think creatively and gain enthusiasm for the possibilities that a career in science can give them.

*Davis, Joshua; ”La Vida Robot”, Wired Magazine, Issue 13.04; April, 2005

** Baine, Wallace, “The Future’s Beginning to Look Distinctly Female”; Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 6, 2005, page B2

***Dunn, Marsha; “Madam Commander”, The Associated Press; Santa Cruz Sentinel, May 8, 2005

****Parrack, Keely, “African American Acheivers”, Christian Science Monitor, Feb.21, 2006, pg.18-19

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