The story of Bell Labs can’t be told without the pioneering Black inventors who worked at the legendary research company and charted a new path for diversity in science.
The innovations of Bell Labs’ Black scientists will be part of a technology showcase planned for the lobby of the company’s new headquarters in New Brunswick, which was approved for construction earlier this month, according to Nokia.
The New Jersey-based company was known for being among the first to hire Black scientists and fund their research. Black Bell Labs scientists are behind hundreds of important scientific discoveries, including the weather-proof coating for phone cables, the technology behind the modern microphone, research integral to technology used by NASA and more.
Nokia’s research arm, Nokia Bell Labs, announced in December it will leave its historic headquarters in Murray Hill over the next five years and relocate to New Brunswick’s New Jersey Health + Life Science Exchange, known as the HELIX innovation center. The $750 million HELIX research complex will include three new buildings in the city’s downtown on the site of the former Ferren Mall.
READ MORE: A plan to open a $27M Black inventors museum in New Jersey
The details of the technology showcase slated to be featured in the lobby of Bell Labs’ new headquarters are still being worked out, company officials said. A ground breaking ceremony for the complex is expected early next year.
The company has a long history featuring pioneering Black researchers and scientists.
“There was an interest in and commitment to diversity coming from the top, an openness to creating new types of scientific communities and importantly, the money to do so,” physicist Ankita Anirban said in a 2022 feature in Nature on Black scientists at Bell Labs.
Walter Lincoln Hawkins, known as Linc Hawkins, was the first Black scientist on staff at Bell Labs, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the 1940s, phone companies were looking for a replacement to lead-coated phone cables. Hawkins developed a plastic impervious to ultraviolet radiation, which helped protect phone cables and has saved billions of dollars for telephone companies around the world, according to Nokia.
In 1992, Hawkins received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation Research.
Hawkins was described as the personal hero of another Black inventor at Bell Labs — James West.
“Linc Hawkins joined Bell Labs in 1942, which was before Jackie Robinson broke into baseball. But everybody knows Jackie Robinson; very few people know of Lincoln Hawkins. So he’s my hero,” West told the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in a 2020 interview.
West was at the forefront of acoustic science as the co-inventor of the foil electret microphone, a small microphone that did not require a battery and helped change the communications industry. Today, nearly all microphone technology is based on the electret microphone and the invention can be found in everything from smartphones to hearing aids.
When West arrived at Bell Labs in 1957, he was one of just a handful of Black employees.
West and a group of Black professionals at Bell Labs formed the Association of Black Laboratory Employees in 1970 to promote diversity, West said during a 2021 panel at Princeton University. The group lobbied Bell Labs to fund a first-of-its-kind fellowship program, known as the Corporate Research Fellowship Program, that recruited promising scientists of color, funded their PhD research, and paired them with a mentor already on Bell Labs’ staff.
The fellowship program went on to support many accomplished alumni. They included: James Hunt, who co-invented the Hunt-Szymanski algorithm that is widely employed in computer science and mathematics; and William A. Massey, who went on to become the first tenured African American mathematician at an Ivy league university.
Shirley Ann Jackson, a theoretical physicist, was the first Black woman to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a doctorate in 1973.
In 1976, she joined Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, where she spent the next 15 years conducting research in theoretical physics, solid state and quantum physics, and optical physics, according to Nokia.
After leaving Bell Labs staff in 1991, she continued to serve as a consultant while teaching physics at Rutgers University. In 1999, Jackson became thepresident of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a position she held for more than two decades, stepping down in 2022.
Jackson’s contributions have been recognized by world leaders. In 1995, Jackson was appointed chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under President Bill Clinton and in 2014, she served on President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and was co-chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
Jackson is a 2014 recipient of theNational Medal of Science, the highest honor for scientific achievement presented by the U.S. government.
Clyde Bethea was recruited in the 1970s by the research division of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, where his research on lasers, imaging, and quantum electronics spanned over 35 years, according to Nokia.
In 2001, he was inducted into the Space Foundation Hall of Fame, sponsored by NASA and U.S. military, for his invention of the quantum well photodetector camera, a camera immune to radiation that couldn’t be blinded by lasers, Bethea said during a 2022 panel titled the “Black Scientific Renaissance at Bell Labs,” sponsored by the Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton.
Bethea has more than 30 domestics patents and over 100 worldwide, as well as 180 authored/co authored peer-reviewed publications in the field of lasers, imaging and quantum electronics, according to his author profile with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Many of the pioneering Black researchers worked at Bell Labs during a series of ownership changes.
The famed Bell Labs began in 1925 as the Bell Telephone Laboratories, a science and communication research arm of the Bell system with ownership split between AT&T and Western Electric. In the 1980s, AT&T Technologies acquired the company, according to the Nokia Bell Labs website.
In 1996, AT&T spun off most of Bell Laboratories and its equipment manufacturing business into Lucent Technologies, leading to a series of ownership changes.
Following a merger in 2007, Bell Laboratories and the former research and innovations division of Alcatel were combined into a single organization. And in 2016, Nokia acquired Alctael-Lucent, merging Bell Labs and Nokia’s research arm FutureWorks.
Through nearly all those changes, the company’s headquarters in Murray Hill has remained a constant. Murray Hill, a section of Berkeley Heights and New Providence, has been the home of Bell Labs for more than 80 years. Now, even that is changing.
Nokia said the move to New Brunswick will help Bell Labs to adapt and evolve to remain at the forefront of cutting-edge technology.
It’s uncertain what will happen to the Murray Hill site once Bell Labs leaves. The mayors of New Providence and Berkeley Heights have both said they are working with each other, as well as state and local officials, to find a new use for the property.
Gov. Phil Murphy met with officials in Berkeley Heights in January to discuss next steps on the Murray Hill campus.
“While this will be a long process — and we do not have new information since December — we are committed to embarking on it shoulder-to-shoulder with our residents during public visioning meetings and in partnership with the N.J. Economic Development Authority and Governor Murphy,” Berkeley Heights Mayor Angie Devanney said in a February newsletter.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
Jackie Roman may be reached at jroman@njadvancemedia.com.
