An element is a chemical substance made up of a particular kind of atom and hence cannot be broken down or transformed by a chemical reaction into a different element, though it can be transmuted into another element through a nuclear reaction.
Almost 40 years separate Shirley Ann Jackson's achievement, as the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in theoretical high energy physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Jedidah Isler, the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Yale.
And the needle is moving, however slowly. Jedidah Isler was one of the first three students to be accepted into the Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge Program. Nine years later, she is the first black woman in the history of Yale University â a place still struggling to diversify â to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy.