At Shine My Crown, we celebrate the achievements of Black women all year long. This month is no different. On Black History Month, we’re highlighting remarkable women who have broke through glass ceilings to become the movers and shakers in medicine, tech, healthcare, finance, media, government, and so much more!
Today, we honor Clarice Phelps, a nuclear chemist who became the first Black woman to create an element on the periodic table of the elements.
Her and her team worked to create tennessine, the second-heaviest known element and the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table. Although she receives recognition now, she says the groundbreaking feat was fraught with trials.
When her lab was honored for creating tennessine, her name was not included on an event planned to celebrate the milestone. Her name could not be found on any place cards at the gala and her name was omitted on the the plaque listing scientists involved in the discovery,” according a report of her featured on CNN.
“They had left me off this whole thing,” Phelps said. “I felt embarrassed because everyone is wandering around this luncheon, and I literally didn’t have a seat at the table. I went outside, and I was crying.”
It was later discovered that her name was not on the plaque because of an error in a spreadsheet’s line breaks.
Phelps’ “name was inadvertently omitted from a plaque dedicated to (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) staff credited with the discovery of tennessine, an error we quickly corrected,” the institution later told CNN. The lab “is incredibly proud of Clarice Phelps — a US Navy veteran, a prolific scientist, an active member of the East Tennessee community.”
She would eventually be acknowledged by Kit Chapman, the author of Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table, who spoke on the significance of Phelps helping to discover of tennessine.
“We can’t imagine where tennessine could take us,” Chapman said, who added that the element could possibly be used “in smoke detectors, to treat cancers, even to power rovers on Mars.”
Phelps, the mother of three children, hopes that her work inspires the next generation of Black women scientists.
“I want to be that person for that little girl who’s looking for somebody that looks like them, doing things that people say they can’t do.”
She concluded: “No one can take away what you know – your experience and knowledge and your self-worth.”
