Jesse
Storyboard Text
- The Beginning
- Child Genius?
- University of Chicago
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- Jesse Wilkins was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 27, 1923 to Lucile Beatrice Robinson Wilkins who held a master’s degree and taught in the Chicago Public School system. His father, J. Ernest Wilkins, a prominent attorney, was assistant Secretary of Labor during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration.
- Stepping Up
- At age 13 (1936) he entered college at the University of Chicago.By 19 (1942), he became the 7th African-American to earn a Ph.D in mathematics.In 1957 and 1960, he earned his bachelor and master degrees in mechanical engineering from New York University.
- Awards/Achievement
- After completing his Ph.D., Wilkins taught mathematics for one year at Tuskegee Institute (1943-1944) before being recruited to work at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago where he contributed to the Manhattan Project. Wilkins worked there between 1944 and 1946. Wilkins collaborated with Wigner on research in neutron absorption, leading to their discovery of the Wigner-Wilkins approach for estimating the distribution of neutron energies within nuclear reactors.
- Impact
- Between 1946-1985, he went back and forth working in Nuclear engineering for private industry companies and teaching Applied Mathematical Physics at Howard University and started the P.H.D program there.He retired for five years in 1985, but returned to teaching at Clark Atlanta University until he died
- In 1974, he was titled as the President of the American Nuclear SocietyIn 1976, he became the second African-American to be inducted into the Academy of Engineering.He was a Council Member of the American Mathematical Society fro 1975-1977.The US Army awarded him the Outstnding Citizen Service Medal in 1980.Wilkins, Jr. also published over 100 papers in Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering.
- Jesse Ernest Wilkins, Jr. has impacted society tremendously. He worked with the Manhattan Project in developing atomic bombs that assisted in ending WWII. As a teacher, he molded the minds of students at multiple HBCUs. And lastly, as a person he inspired others and achieved a large amount of success throughout his life
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