Margaret Tolbert facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Margaret Tolbert
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| Born | November 24, 1943  |
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Margaret Ellen Mayo Tolbert (born November 24, 1943) is an American biochemist. A biochemist studies the chemical processes inside living things. She worked as a professor and as a director at Tuskegee University. She was also a chemist for the company British Petroleum.
From 1996 to 2002, Tolbert was the director of the New Brunswick Laboratory. This made her the first African American and the first woman to lead a laboratory for the Department of Energy.
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Early Life and Schooling
Margaret Ellen Mayo was born in Suffolk, Virginia. Her mother passed away when she was very young, and her father died a few years later. She and her five siblings were raised by their grandmother. When their grandmother got sick, their older sister took care of them.
During her childhood, her city was segregated. This meant that there were separate areas for Black people and white people at places like beaches, stores, and movie theaters.
Margaret walked two miles to her junior high school. Despite the long walk, she was the top student in her class. In high school, she took advanced classes and also worked as a maid to help her family. A kind couple she worked for, Mr. and Mrs. S. A. Cook, encouraged her to go to college. In 1963, she graduated from East Suffolk High School as the valedictorian, which means she had the best grades in her class.
College and University Studies
Margaret went to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She was able to attend because she received financial aid. At Tuskegee, she studied chemistry and minored in mathematics. She worked as a student research assistant, studying how electricity moves through different chemicals in water.
She also did summer research at other places, like the Argonne National Laboratory. There, she studied the element uranium. She graduated from Tuskegee in 1967.
After Tuskegee, she earned a master's degree in chemistry from Wayne State University in 1968. She then went to Brown University for her doctorate degree, which she received in 1974. Her research at Brown was about how cells in a rat's liver send signals to each other. This was important work in understanding how cells communicate.
A Career in Science and Leadership
Teaching and Research
After earning her doctorate, Dr. Tolbert returned to Tuskegee University as a professor. She continued her research on the liver. She also taught at Florida A&M University and did research in Brussels, Belgium.
In 1979, Tolbert became the first female director of The Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee University. She held this important job for eight years. During this time, she continued to study how different medicines affect the human liver.
Working for BP and Government Labs
In 1987, Tolbert began working for the oil company British Petroleum. She helped with the company's planning.
Later, she became a director at the Argonne National Laboratory. In 1996, she took on a new challenge as the director of the New Brunswick Laboratory. She was the first African American and the first woman to be in charge of a Department of Energy lab.
As director, she worked on important projects. These included preventing the spread of nuclear materials and preparing special materials to test scientific instruments.
Working for the National Science Foundation
In 2002, Tolbert became a Senior Advisor at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF is a government agency that supports science and engineering. Her job was to help increase the number of women, minorities, and people with disabilities in science. She retired from the NSF in 2011.
Honors and Awards
Dr. Tolbert has received many awards for her work. In 1998, she was elected as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is a big honor for a scientist. She is also a member of other important science groups.
Autobiography
In 2015, Dr. Tolbert published a book about her life called Resilience in the Face of Adversity: A Suffolkian’s Life Story.
