‘‘Academic racism’’ and the neglected scholarship of the anatomist M. Wharton Young

What is it about?

This article describes a possible case of ‘‘academic racism’’ by examining the scientific work of Moses Wharton Young, MD, PhD (1904–1986), an African American Professor of Neuroanatomy at Howard University College of Medicine from 1934 to 1973. Young authored about 100 publications on topics that included asthma, glaucoma baldness, and, most significantly, blast injuries and the structure and function of the inner ear. Young’s research was rarely cited during his lifetime, but his work on the pathophysiology of blast injuries has been mentioned in recent scientific papers. My paper examines the issue of whether the failure to consider Young’s work was an example of ‘‘academic racism”—a term used by Winston (1971) to describe how African American scholars and their scholarship were overlooked.

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Why is it important?

It documents an important example of an African American scientist and his research work being overlooked in the mid-twentieth century.