A Quantum Life: My unlikely journey from the street to the stars
Ballantine Books
THEY called him 鈥渢he professor鈥� because, by the age of 10, he was already reading every book he could lay his hands on. In the sixth grade, he scored 162 on an IQ test at school. Still, by the time he was in his teens, the certified genius was dealing weed and carrying a gun for protection.
鈥淚f anyone had told me I鈥檇 grow up to be an actual professor at MIT, UC Berkeley, and the University of Cape Town, I wouldn鈥檛 have believed them,鈥� writes astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi in his inspiring memoir A Quantum Life. The book follows his 鈥渦nlikely journey from the street to the stars鈥�.
Born James Edward Plummer Jr, Oluseyi was often uprooted as a child, and learned to survive in some of the toughest urban neighbourhoods across the US. He also lived in rural Mississippi, a state where older African American people still addressed white people, including children, as 鈥渕a鈥檃m鈥� and 鈥渟ir鈥�.
Advertisement
鈥淎lbert Einstein and I would have been friends,鈥� he recalls thinking when he read about the scientist. Einstein, too, was told to 鈥渟top staring into space鈥�, and his family moved often. He also featured when Oluseyi taught himself to program at high school. He coded concepts of Einstein鈥檚 theory of special relativity into a game and won first place in physics in the Mississippi State Science Fair.
To fund his college education, he joined the navy, where he could train to be a nuclear engineer. But after two years, he was diagnosed with atopic dermatitis, which barred him from serving on ships. An old friend encouraged him to enrol at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. The pair sold drugs there and dropped out, but Oluseyi re-enrolled.
This time, David Teal, a white, Harvard-educated professor in the historically Black college, took an interest in Oluseyi, urging him to attend a meeting of African American physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The experience felt like an 鈥渁lien abduction鈥�, writes Oluseyi, but it gave him a clear goal: to apply to graduate programmes.
鈥淓very year,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢he Stanford physics department took in one student like me 鈥� a diversity admission who wasn鈥檛 at the same level of academic preparation as the rest of the class.鈥� It would take a lot more than hard work alone to earn his PhD there, but he was up for the challenge (and later a change of name).
鈥淚t would take a lot more than hard work to earn his PhD, but Hakeem Oluseyi was up for the challenge鈥�
Besides, his doctoral adviser was Arthur B. C. Walker. The African American astrophysicist, whose telescopes gave unprecedented views of the sun, had mentored students from under-represented groups in physics. Sally Ride, the first US woman in space, was his first doctoral student.
Walker told Oluseyi that some still believed that while Black scientists could build ingenious gadgets, they weren鈥檛 gifted enough to make insights in pure physics or in the analyses of data and observations. While Walker got credit for his novel technology to study the sun, doubters said he had few pure science publications. Oluseyi worked with his mentor to seal his legacy before Walker died in 2001.
Today, Oluseyi is one of a handful of Black astrophysicists, but he has been working to change that. In 2008, he received a grant from the Kellogg Foundation to set up a mentoring programme for Black astronomy students in South Africa. They were brilliant, but felt second-class at university, says Oluseyi. He shared his struggles as he taught the students advanced topics. They passed in the top 20 per cent of the class.
South Africa will eventually co-host the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world鈥檚 most powerful radio telescope cluster. Four of Oluseyi鈥檚 students are in the front row of a SKA team photo. He wasn鈥檛 there, but says 鈥渂elieve me, I鈥檓 standing tall and proud鈥� next to them鈥�.
Vijaysree Venkatraman is a Boston-based science journalist
