This is a modified presentation that I have given for a Joint ACS-NOBCChE Meeting (December 2009) in Cincinnati, OH. The first few slides provide some historical context with background information on Carver, Professor Saint Elmo Brady, the first African American to earn a PhD in chemistry (1916), and Professor Marie Maynard Daly, the first African American woman to earn a PhD in chemistry (1947). The remaining slides focus on Robinson and Bridges. I would emphasize to the audience that each of these five chemists are significant because of their contributions to the chemical sciences, just like all chemists.

This talk can be presented in its entirety, or some slides could be used to accompany discussions on specific topics, such as multiple bonding between main group elements. For example, in 1997, Robinson and his colleagues reported the first gallyne, containing a Ga-Ga triple bond (JACS, 1997, 119(23), pp 5471-5472).  Subsequently, the late Professor F. Albert Cotton published an article the following year (JACS, 1998, 120 (8), pp 1795-1799) challenging the research efforts by Robinson, who subsequently published another article to support the earlier paper (JACS, 1998, 120(15), 3773-3780). In a nutshell, this discussion sparked a real debate about how we describe multiple bonds in inorganic complexes.