Carolyn Parker (1917-1966) was a research physicist and a teacher/professor who contributed to the Manhattan project through her work on polonium used as an initiator for nuclear bombs. She was the first African-American woman known to have gained a postgraduate degree in physics. She died prematurely of leukemia related to her exposure to radiation during her work.

1. Carolyn Beatrice Parker was born on November 18, 1917 in Gainesville, Florida in an educated African-American family.  Her father, Julius, was one of the first black doctors. Her mother, Della Ella Murrel Parker, was an elementary school teacher.  Carolyn was the eldest of seven children and almost all of her siblings obtained advanced degrees.
2. During the Great Depression, the family moved to Tampa, Florida. Carolyn went through segregated public schools and graduated from Middleton High School in 1933.
3. Parker was inspired to pursue physics at Fisk University, which is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, TN. She graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1938.
4. Parker was recruited for teaching jobs between 1938-42 in Florida and Virginia high schools, later she worked as an instructor in physics and mathematics at Bluefield State College, a historically black college in West Virginia.
5. She worked on the highly secret Dayton project as a part of the Manhattan project during and after WWII (1943-1947). She was located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Parker’s team was tasked with separating and purifying highly radioactive element polonium (Po-210) to be used as the initiator for the atomic bombs.
6. After her work in Dayton was completed, Parker became an assistant professor of physics at Fisk University in Tennessee in 1947.
7. In 1951, Parker enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and graduated with a Master of Science in physics in 1953 with a thesis titled “Range distribution of 122 Mev (pi⁺) and (pi⁻) mesons in brass.”
8. During her master’s coursework in physics in 1952, she continued her work and research as a physicist in the geophysics research division at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a prestigious research laboratory.
9. Although Carolyn completed coursework for a Ph.D. in physics at MIT, she did not complete the process of defending her dissertation. Parker developed multiple sclerosis and leukemia, potentially from exposure to radiation while working on the Dayton Project. However, she still remains the first African-American woman known to have gained a postgraduate degree in physics.
10. Parker died in Gainesville, Florida, on March 17, 1966, at the age of 48 from leukemia. She is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Gainesville. She never married and had no children since she decided to devote herself to her work and science. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, IL, established the Carolyn B. Parker Fellowship for the Superconducting Quantum Materials and System Center.