Leon B. Gortler – Knox Family Collection

Born on January 5, 1904 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, William Jacob Knox, Jr. was an African-American chemist and the only African-American supervisor in the Manhattan Project from 1942 to 1945. From 1921 to 1925, William attended Harvard University, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. He went on to earn a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in organic chemistry in 1929 and a doctoral degree in chemical engineering in 1935.

Lawrence Howland Knox was born on September 30, 1906. Lawrence received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Bates College in 1928, then went on to receive a master’s of science degree from Stanford University in 1931. He earned his doctoral degree in organic chemistry from Harvard University in 1940.

After serving as a professor in the chemistry department at North Carolina A&T College from 1935 to 1942, William Jacob Knox, Jr. was appointed head of the department of chemistry at Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama. One year later in 1943, he joined a team of scientists at Columbia University who worked on the Manhattan Project. William was credited with conducting nuclear research of gaseous diffusion techniques used for the separation of uranium isotopes. His efforts in the development of uranium contributed to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. William then went on to become a research assistant at the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York from 1945 to 1970. He was awarded a total of twenty-one patents while working for the company. William was also an active social justice activist. He was a founding member of the Urban League of Rochester, which was established in 1965. He was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Lawrence Howland Knox joined his brother William in 1944 in the Division of War Research at Columbia University, where he studied radiation and contributed to the Manhattan Project alongside his older brother. In 1948, Lawrence was invited by fellow American chemist and Manhattan Project colleague William von Eggers Doering to serve as resident director at the Hickrill Chemical Research Foundation in Katonah, New York, where he specialized in long-term, speculative research. He also served alongside American chemist Paul Doughty Bartlett in his work on testing organic mechanisms in chemistry, particularly the bicyclic molecule.

Lawrence Howland Knox passed away on January 6, 1966.

William Jacob Knox Jr. passed away on July 9, 1995.

Sources

Leon B. Gortler – Knox Family Collection, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Gortler, Leon B. and Stephen J. Weininger. “Chemical Relations: William and Lawrence Knox, African American Chemists.” Distillations (July 2, 2010). https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/chemical-relations-william-and-lawrence-knox-african-american-chemists.