Benjamin Banneker

Benjamin Banneker ( born November 9, 1731 in Baltimore County, Maryland, † October 25, 1806 ) was a mathematician, astronomer, and abolitionist. He is regarded as the first African American scientist.

Life

Banneker was born under the name of Benjamin Bannaky as a free citizen, since his parents (his mother from birth, his father had bought out ) also were free. His grandmother, originally from England, was condemned as debt bondage in Maryland for alleged theft for forced labor. After the seven-year employment contract they bought a tobacco farm and later married one of her two slaves, an African. Banneker grew up on this farm and attended some winter long a Quaker, his knowledge and his skills came but primarily by his grandmother, great things he brought himself also even with. Early on he showed a mathematical and mechanical aptitude.

1753 developed Banneker wooden one of the first completely made ​​of US- American material pocket watches, which he made ​​known in the region. Only in 1788 that he began to deal with astronomy. The necessary books and instruments he got from George Elicott, a brother of the mayor of his native town. In 1789 he said, in contrast to well-known astronomer, almost exactly a solar eclipse ahead. Two years later he took with Mayor Andrew Ellicott, the measurement of the future Federal District Washington, DC before. However, on the based on the plans of Pierre Charles L' Enfant design Washington he had no part.

Published between 1792 and 1797 Banneker an annual almanac, astronomical ephemeris, but also political, humanitarian and abolitionist texts contained. A comparable with the United States Institute of Peace was founded in 1984 device ( " an office for marketing and promo perserving perpetual peace" ) was then demanded of him. A manuscript of the first almanac he sent later president Thomas Jefferson and criticized in a Beibrief whose views of the White mentally inferior black race and the contradiction between the Constitution to all people promised freedom and perpetual slavery. The situation of the blacks he compared to that of the United States under the " tyranny of the British Crown " before the Revolutionary War. In his reply, Jefferson was enthusiastic about Banneker's work that he did Marquis de Condorcet, Secretary of the Académie des sciences in Paris sent. He look at the almanac as further evidence of a possible equivalence of the talents of the Black, whose expression would be hampered by the " inferior conditions of their existence in Africa & America." In a letter written in 1809 he attested Banneker due to its letter to him, but only a "normal" intelligence.

In his last years he published, among other treatises on bees and the cycle of locusts. Benjamin Banneker died at the age of 74 years in the house of his farm sold to the Ellicott family. On the day of the funeral it burned along with almost all records from Banneker's ( and also the still ongoing pocket ).

Appreciation

• Several schools in the U.S. and the " Banneker - Douglass Museum " in Annapolis (Maryland) are named after Benjamin Banneker.
• On the " L' Enfant Plaza" in Washington DC today, " Benjamin Banneker Park and Memorial " was erected in 1970 in the midst of a likewise named after him roundabout. In or adjacent to the park, a four -meter-high statue Banneker to be built.
• On the former site of the family farm near Baltimore, a " Benjamin Banneker Historical Park & Museum " was opened in 1998.
• The United States Postal Service in 1980 brought a stamp with his image out.
• The company Banneker Watches Founded in 2005, it has set itself the goal of making the name Banneker and his achievement as the first American Uhrentwickler familiar. In all the clocks in the company it is in honor of precious wood installed.
• Stevie Wonder honored him in 1976 in his song " Black Man ".

Quotes

• "The color of the skin is in no way connected with the strength of the mind or intellectual powers. " (1796 )