DID YOU KNOW? for February 10 – 24, 2025 

J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. (1923-2011) was a pioneering African American mathematician, physicist, and educator who worked at the University of Chicago Met Lab during the Manhattan Project. Wilkins was a child prodigy who completed his mathematics undergrad degree at 17 years old and his master's degree just one year later. Later in his career he researched methods for producing fissionable nuclear materials – plutonium-239 in particular. He did not learn the purpose of his research until after the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Learn more about J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. here.