As a kid, Clarice Phelps often turned to one image for inspiration.
"For the first 18 years of my career, I was the only Black woman in my field. When I was in the Navy, I was the only Black girl in my division. Afterwards in my lab, I was the only Black woman in the whole facility — and initially they thought I was the janitor," she told CNN, recalling requests to grab the trash.. "You feel like you have to represent your entire race and descend the racial stereotypes ... especially in nuclear and radiochemistry.
As part of the discovery team, Phelps purified the element berkelium to create a film — a painstaking, months-long process. Then, collaborators in Germany and Russia "relentlessly bombarded" it for months with calcium., each with the required 117 protons.
When her lab celebrated tennessine, Phelps was left off the gala's guest list; when her supervisor got her in, no place card bore her name, she said. Even the plaque listing scientists involved in the discovery omitted her. Phelps' "name was inadvertently omitted from a plaque dedicated to staff credited with the discovery of tennessine, an error we quickly corrected," the institution told CNN. The lab "is incredibly proud of Clarice Phelps — a U.S. Navy veteran, a prolific scientist, an active member of the East Tennessee community.
After winning the monthslong battle to get the plaque recommissioned with her name on it, Phelps started talking with reporters about the significance of tennessine and her role on the team. And she was acknowledged by Chapman, a science historian, and British physicist Jess Wade, who has written over a thousand Wikipedia biographies about women and minority scientists, as the first Black woman involved in the discovery of a new element.
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