Alpha Phi Alpha’s St. Elmo Brady Became the First Black American to Earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry

Did you know that the first Black American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States was a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. who devoted his life to building science programs at HBCUs? His name was St. Elmo Brady, and his work still shapes Black scientific education today.

St. Elmo Brady was born on December 22, 1884. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, the historically Black university in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1908. He went on to the University of Illinois, where in 1916 he became the first African American in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, completing a dissertation titled “The Divalent Oxygen Atom.” Along the way, he became the first African American admitted to the chemistry honor society Phi Lambda Upsilon and was among the first inducted into the scientific research society Sigma Xi.

Brady was a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans, founded in 1906 at Cornell University.

Brady dedicated his career to historically Black colleges and universities. According to the University of Illinois Department of Chemistry, he taught and built chemistry programs at Tuskegee Institute from 1916 to 1920, at Howard University from 1920 to 1927, and at Fisk University from 1927 to 1952, where he developed a graduate program in chemistry. After retiring from Fisk, he helped establish a chemistry program at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. Across four historically Black institutions, he laid the foundation for generations of Black scientists.

Brady died on December 25, 1966. In 2019, the American Chemical Society honored him with a National Historic Chemical Landmark, and his name lives on in research partnerships that continue to connect the University of Illinois with HBCUs.

From Fisk University to the laboratories he built across the HBCU world, Alpha Phi Alpha’s St. Elmo Brady opened the doors of American science for the generations of Black chemists who followed.