Anna Coble

Coble was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she became interested in mathematics and physics.[4] Her father was a teacher at St. Augustine's University. Coble studied mathematics at Howard University, earning a bachelor's in 1958 and a master's in 1961.[5] After graduating she taught physics at North Carolina A&T State University for four years.[5] Coble moved to University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign for her postgraduate studies, where she became an advocate for minority students and women.[5] She completed her PhD in 1973 under the supervision of Floyd Dunn.[5][6] She spent two years at Washington University in St. Louis studying the impact of high-intensity ultrasound on frogs.[5]

Coble moved back to Howard University, where she was the first black woman to be hired to the faculty.[5] She spent an entire summer finding houses for 200 black graduate students, forfeiting her own research.[5] During her time at Howard University there was a 30 - 40% cut to federal research grants.[5] She was part of the Writing Across the Curriculum faculty.[7] She was eventually promoted to Associate Professor.[8]

Coble was part of the formation of the National Society of Black Physicists.[9] She served on the board of the Ionia Whipper Home, a shelter for neglected teenage girls.[5] She developed educational resources for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council.[10]

She worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Association of Physics Teachers to support underrepresented groups in science.[5] One project, the AAAS Black Church Project, took hands-on science to young people in the Washington Area.[5] She passed away in 2009.[4]

• Timeline of women in science