BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " JAMES ANDREW HARRIS " WAS A NUCLEAR CHEMIST AND MADE A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

                                                                                                                    BLACK            SOCIAL       HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         James Andrew Harris
Born: March 26, 1932
Birthplace: Waco, Texas
James Andrew Harris: Nuclear Chemist

James Andrew Harris was born in Waco, Texas in 1932. He attended Houston-Tillotson College in Austin, Texas and received a B.S. in Chemistry (1953). He received a Masters in Public Administration from California State University, Hayward, CA, in 1975. Mr. Harris worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in the heavy isotope production division. He was appointed Head of the Engineering and Technical Services Division of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1977, where he is still active in nuclear chemistry research. In the course of several years Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory produced a number of new elements by bombarding atomic targets in an accelerator. The research team purified and prepared target material and, after exposing the target to a bombardment stream for hundreds of hours with carbon atoms, the research team detected the new element 104 for just a few seconds in 1969. Element 105 was produced in 1970 when the same target was bombarded with nitrogen. The new element 104 was named Rutherfordium and element 105 was named Hahnium, in honor of two atomic pioneers, Ernest Rutherford and George Hahn.
New Element no.110 discovered on November 9, 1994. Includes a history of elements 103 - 112.
Unlike most of his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, James Harris did not have a Ph.D. degree. He had a B.S. in Chemistry and later took graduate courses in chemistry and physics. However, his alma mater (Houston-Tillotson) conferred an honorary doctorate upon him in 1973, predominantly due to his work in the co-discovery of elements 104 and 105.
Professional Memberships:

• National Society of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers
• Nuclear Target Society
• American Chemical Society
• AEC Transplutonium Program
• Alpha Phi Alpha
• Honorary Ph.D. from Houston-Tillotson College (1973)
• Scientific Merit Award from the Mayor of Richmond, CA
• Certificate of Merit from the Black Dignity Science Association