Dr. Ronald E. Mickens

Peabody High, Petersburg (1960) 
Physicist

Dr. Ronald Mickens took an early interest in science, took classes during the summer months and graduated from Peabody High School at the age of 17. Upon graduation he received a full scholarship to Fisk University in Nashville, TN. After graduating summa cum laude from Fisk in 1964, he received a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in 1968 from Vanderbilt University. His studies at Vanderbilt were supported by fellowships from the Danforth and Woodrow Wilson Foundations. He then received a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to investigate elementary particles at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He returned to Fisk in 1970 as a faculty member and worked at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Bolder Colorado. In 1982, Dr. Mickens became a Professor at Clark Atlanta University and was named the Fuller E. Calloway Professor of Physics in 1982. In the 1970s he helped found the National Association of Black Physicists and served as the society’s historian. He has been active in efforts to engage more African Americans in physics. He has published more than three hundred scientific articles and fifteen books. His research in the area of African Americans in science led to the publication of several historical and biographical works about African American scientists, such asEdward Bouchet: The First African American Doctorate. In 2015 his personal papers were included in the collection of the Armistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA.