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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33463 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I don't think I can satisfy the exact requirements you want. David Blackwell did his work while the foundations of his field were being developed so it gets outsized use. There isn't really something as important as statistics where the foundational work was done late enough that the generation born after say civil rights could contribute. I think it's uncontroversial that there wasn't a level playing field before?

My list is also somewhat focused on younger people since it's a bit easier for me to judge their credentials and I'm more likely to have heard of them.

With that said, here's a list of prominent black scientists and mathematicians I can name off the top of my head. I think all of them are pretty respected within their field:

This isn't quite 10, some quick further research finds:

Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum matches the level of impact you're looking for, but sort of in a right-time-right-place technicality way. Also, Robert Ellis seems to match the older-figure pioneer pattern of David Blackwell.

You can judge for yourself how compelling this list is. It works better as support for the level-of-talent argument instead of the level-of-societal-contribution one, though the second is very hard for me to judge and sort of random.

I’d discount Fryer (economics is not really a science in my book) and maybe McWhorter. For the others, I will need to spend some time on mathsci.net and arxiv to be sure. Let’s take a few days’ pause on the discussion if you don’t mind.

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