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March 29, 2004
History of Science
Excerpts from a speech I delivered at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Recently, I purchased the U.S. News & World Report. It was a special issue entitled “History’s Great Explorers.” It described the race to be the first man to reach the North Pole, which is the farthest point north or the end of the Earth.On the magazine’s cover is a big photo of Robert E. Peary, whom the U.S. News & World Report declared to be the first man to reach the North Pole.
The first man to reach the North Pole was not Robert E. Peary. The first man to reach the North Pole was an African-American named Matthew Henson.
On May 8, 1900, two co-explorers – one black and the other white - arrived near the North Pole.
According to the records, the black explorer Matthew Henson arrived at the North Pole 45 minutes ahead of his white co-explorer Robert E. Peary.
When Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the moon before Buzz Aldrin, we proclaimed him as the first man to walk on the moon.
Therefore, if it is correct to say that Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon then it is equally correct to say that Matthew Henson was the first man to reach the North Pole.
Race seems to be at issue here, but I am not the only witness to the effect of the “selective recording” of history.
Similarly, Europeans and Brazilians complain that American historians of science omit important scientific contributions made in their nations.
An Englishman named Joseph Swan invented the light bulb. The story was re-retold and re-centered around an American named Thomas Edison.
A Brazilian named Santos-Dumont achieved the world’s first heavier-than-air flight. The story was retold and re-centered around the American Wright brothers.
A German named Konrad Zuse invented, in 1941, the world’s first programmable computer named ZUSE Z3. The story was retold and re-centered around the American computer named ENIAC which was invented five years later.
I could provide a hundred examples of this type of scientific data that was historically ignored.
But it is African scientific contributions that are most often left out from textbooks.
Posted by emeagwali at March 29, 2004 10:40 AM
