Herman Brenner White (born 28 September 1948) is an American physicist who works at Fermilab. He won the 2010 American Physical Society Edward A Bouchet Award.
Herman Brenner White | |
|---|---|
 White in Fermilab in 2005 | |
| Born | 28 September 1948 |
| Alma mater | Michigan State University Earlham College |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Fermilab North Central College |
Early life and education
White was born in Tuskegee, Alabama.[1] His mother, Susie Mae Fort White, worked at John Andrew Hospital and his father, Herman Brenner White Senior, served in the military.[1] He studied at the Tuskegee Institute High School, where he became interested in nuclear engineering.[1] He was raised in a segregated community.[2] He saw his role in the civil rights movement as being an exceptional student who could prove that black people deserved equal access to education.[1] He studied nuclear physics at Earlham College, before joining Michigan State University, earning a bachelor's degree in physics in 1970.[1][3] White was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship to study at CERN, and also worked as a research associate at Argonne National Laboratory.[1][2] He completed his master's degree in 1974.[1] He joined Fermilab in 1974, where he was the first African-American physicist to be appointed.[4]
Research and career
White held various roles at Fermilab since joining in 1974.[3] Working with his supervisor, Ray Stefanski, he developed a simple formula to calculate neutrino flux.[5] In 1976 he joined Yale University as a research fellow. He joined Florida State University for his doctoral studies, earning a PhD in 1991.[3] He joined the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí to work on kaons. In 1994, White was appointed the Illinois Research Corridor Fellow and adjunct professor at North Central College.[3][6] He also worked on the neutrino oscillation experiment (E701) and SciBooNE.[7] He studies neutrino cross-sections and muon conversion.[2][8] In 2006 his life story was recorded by the HistoryMakers of Chicago as part of the oral history archives.[3]
White supports students from diverse backgrounds in their careers in physics.[9] In 2010 White was awarded the American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for his work on the Tevatron experiment and outstanding public service.[10] He serves on the advisory board for QuarkNet, National Society of Black Physicists and the Illinois Institute of Technology.[6][2] He is a member of the Teachers Academy for Mathematics and Science in Chicago.[11] He served on the advisory panel for the United States Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.[7] He ran for congress in the 11th congressional district of Illinois in 2016.[12] In 2017 he appeared in a series of online videos for Science the Day!.[13][14] He took part in The Story Collider in Batavia, Illinois in 2018.[15][16]