Manhattan Project Scientists: Samuel Proctor Massie

Samuel P. Massie worked as a chemist for the Manhattan Project.

US NAVAL ACADEMY

Quick Facts

Significance:

Research chemist at Ames Laboratory during the Manhattan Project

Place of Birth:

Little Rock, AR

Date of Birth:

July 3, 1919

Place of Death:

Laurel, MD

Date of Death:

April 10, 2005

Born in Arkansas in 1919, Samuel Proctor Massie, Jr. applied to the University of Arkansas in 1934. Because he was African American, Massie was denied acceptance. Undeterred, Massie enrolled at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College (present-day University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff), graduating in 1937 with a BS in chemistry. Massie earned an MS in chemistry from Nashville, TN’s Fisk University in 1940. 

In 1943, Massie began work as a research assistant for the Manhattan Project at Iowa’s Ames Laboratory, converting uranium isotopes into liquid compounds. After the war, Massie completed his PhD, taught at Langston University in Oklahoma, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Arkansas where his race had caused his rejection decades prior. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Massie to a professorship at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, making him the first African American professor at the institution. In 1994, the US Department of Energy established the Dr. Samuel P. Massie Chair of Excellence, a grant program for minority students to pursue higher education in the sciences. Dr. Massie died in Maryland in 2005.