William Knox, the only Black supervisor in the Manhattan Project

Knox was born in 1904 in Massachusetts, US, the eldest of five children. His grandfather Elijah had been a slave in North Carolina, and Elijah’s sister, Harriet Jacobs, had written Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now regarded as one of the most important first-hand accounts of the southern states before the US civil war. Knox’s father, a mail carrier, emphasised the power of education in gaining a better life, and made the young Knox study hard. The effort was rewarded: in 1921, he gained a place to study chemistry at Harvard University, one of only six Black students in his year.

He was a gifted chemist who found a way to break the colour barrier through science. And yet his story, and that of his brothers, is not simply a celebration of triumph over adversity; it is an important reminder of the value of education, and how we all have a duty to make sure future generations do not experience the struggles of the past.