As it happens, George is also an actor, an athlete and a model. Next week, however, he’ll be wearing his scientist hat as he addresses a conference on the lack of black people in science, engineering and technology (SET). The conference marks the launch of a campaign in Birmingham, entitled Respect, to raise awareness of this issue and to provide black schoolchildren with positive images of black people working in science and technology. George is starring in a poster campaign alongside other black SET professionals, who are acting as mentors for black students in the Birmingham area, raising their aspirations towards technical careers.

“It’s about showing that it’s possible — that people have gone there before,” George says. When he was at school, no one thought to encourage him into a career in science, despite his childhood enthusiasm for finding out how things work. He left school with a few CSEs and at the Jobcentre he saw an opening for a trainee chemist in a Huddersfield chemical plant; by demonstrating his enthusiasm for science, he got the job. There were 300 people in the plant’s laboratory, and everyone but George had O levels and white skin. Outside, the black labourers on the plant made up 25 per cent of the workforce.

The reason for the black hole in science careers is simple, according to Sharon Whittle of the Birmingham Partnership for Change (BPC), which is co-ordinating the conference: “African-Caribbean children are just not aspiring to careers in SET.” Whittle believes the problem has to be addressed before it’s too late; it is widely accepted that the jobs of the future will be increasingly concerned with the application of science and technology.

Within two years, more than 50 per cent of Birmingham’s school population will be drawn from ethnic minorities, and the BPC aims to see them heading confidently towards jobs and courses in science, engineering and technology.

Currently, however, things don’t look too hopeful for the African-Caribbean student population. Birmingham Education Authority statistics indicate that at GCSE level, only 13 per cent of black students are achieving grades A-C in science, compared with 26 per cent of Asian students and 34 per cent of white students.

That is a stark contrast with the figures that show African-Caribbean children to be the best performers in maths at primary school entry in Birmingham. Northamptonshire and Leeds local education authorities have seen similar statistics.

“It’s right across the country, but it seems to be highlighted in Birmingham,” Whittle says. “We’re trying to understand what the barriers are, and how to bridge them.”

According to Joyce Trail, the barriers are usually in the expectations of the students, the teachers or the employers. She, like George, left school at 16 with few qualifications; now she is a dental surgeon and will feature on the Respect campaign’s posters. At school, she had come across African-Caribbean nurses, and aspired to a career in the caring professions, but never expressed it to her teachers. “I’m from the inner city,” she says, “and for me to have wanted to be a nurse would have been considered extremely ambitious.”

By the age of 18, Trail was bringing up two children, and earning a living by cleaning offices and banks while studying for a career in nursing. Ten years later, she had a clutch of O levels, four A levels and a degree. “I think if my headmistress saw me now she’d be surprised — pleased — but surprised,” she says.

The path was far from easy, and she overcame some serious prejudice to get where she is. “It’s not an area I want to criticise, though,” she says. “The establishment really wasn’t expecting this. It was a big step for them to take someone like me on the course.”

Some of the people in the Respect poster campaign took more conventional educational routes. Eric Dean, an electrical engineer who designs communications equipment, took O levels, an Ordinary National Diploma, an engineering degree and a masters degree in communications engineering. Glenn Blackwood, a pharmacist, took A levels at a Birmingham grammar school before doing his pharmacy degree. Other mentors have careers in computer programming, medicine, microbiology and architecture. One thing that they all share is a sense of isolation in their workplace: they are aware of their minority status.

“My personal experience, and that of many other black professionals in SET in Britain, is one of isolation, invisibility and marginalisation,” says Liz Rasekoala, a chemical engineer and the founder of the African-Caribbean Network for Science and Technology. She set up the network — the driving force behind the Respect campaign — two years ago in order to help black schoolchildren into science.

When Rasekoala arrived in Britain to take a masters degree at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (she had been working in a petroleum refinery in Nigeria), she immediately felt part of a minority. The only black students were postgraduates from overseas.

Once she began work in the UK, she found herself paraded as a prize employee: her firm were delighted to have a chance to display their “successful” equal opportunities policy. “It’s the ultimate irony, given the disadvantaged, trampled stereotype of women in third world countries,” she says. “Back there I was perfectly normal: I didn’t realise that I was so special — a black, female, chemical engineer — until I came to this country.”

For British industry and SET employers, equal opportunities is not going to be a quick fix, Rasekoala insists.

“It would be foolishness to say ‘employ more black people’. Where are the black people with the right qualifications?”

But, she says, the employers have an important role to play in nurturing future employees. That means being pro-active: taking part in projects designed to increase black involvement with technical subjects and going into inner city schools to encourage black children to aim for careers in SET. If companies can send their black employees — whose very presence will challenge the notion that blacks can only succeed in music and sport — so much the better.

If blacks who are currently working in science and technology become more visible, their numbers will snowball, says George. His love of athletics — he was the British Universities’ 800-metre champion — leads him to an optimistic analogy. Within weeks of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile record, plenty of people suddenly found that they, too, could do it. “All it takes is to show something is possible,” he says.

SUCCESS STORIES

The term “the real McCoy” is a testament to the success of black engineer Elijah McCoy. The son of Kentucky slaves, he trained as a mechanical engineer in Scotland before returning to work in the US. In the 1870s, he invented a cup that regulated the flow of oil on to moving parts of industrial machines. It was so well designed that those buying new machines would frequently ask if it contained “the real McCoy”, not an imitation. Other black scientists and inventors include Lewis Latimer, inventor of the carbon filament incandescent light bulb in 1881; Percy Julian, who created ways to synthesise cortisone for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in the 1950s; and Patricia Bath, an ophthalmologist who received the US patent in 1988 on a new device to remove cataracts by laser technology.

Nigerian computer scientist Philip Emeagwali broke the computational speed record in 1989 when he hit 3.1 billion calculations per second using the Internet to connect 65,536 computers. The breakthrough is being used in simulation of oil flow and recovery in oil fields, and in weather pattern prediction (http://emeagwali.com).

Neither the DTI, the DfEE, nor the Office of National Statistics hold any data on the types of employment held by African-Caribbeans in this country.

[The Respect campaign launch takes place on September 29 at the Centennial Centre in Birmingham. Contact Liz Rasekoala, African-Caribbean Network for Science and Technology on 0161-877 1480; Sharon Whittle, Birmingham Partnership for Change on 0121-200 3980]