Henry Cecil McBay
American chemist (1914–1995)
Henry Ransom Cecil McBay (May 29, 1914 – 1995) was an American chemist and teacher. McBay won numerous awards for his teaching and mentoring, including the American Chemical Society Award (for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences). McBay also co-founded the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE).
Family
Henry Ransom McBay was born on May 29, 1914, in Mexia, Texas. In 1954, McBay married Shirley Ann Mathis, a mathematician and strong advocate for increasing representations of minority students and researchers in academia.
Education and academic career
McBay enrolled at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and paid for his education with scholarships and by working jobs during college. He earned a B.S. degree in 1934. After earning his master's degree in 1936 from Atlanta University, McBay returned to Wiley College so he could help his younger brother and sister pay for college.
In 1940 McBay joined a newly formed research team at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama assigned the task of finding a suitable substitute for jute fiber. Indian shipments of jute, which was used for rope and fabrics for sacks, had ended due to World War II. The Tuskegee team hoped to prove that okra stems would be an effective substitute, but McBay proved that by the time an okra plant had matured, the stems were too brittle.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry Cecil McBay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.