In today’s video, we bring you Ghanaians who have contributed immensely to the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. If you’re new to the channel, click on the subscribe button so you don’t miss any of our forthcoming videos.
Nii Narku Quaynor
Professor Nii Narku Quaynor, who is popularly known as the “father of the internet in Africa” is a Ghanaian scientist and engineer who has played a key role in the introduction, expansion and development of the Internet throughout Africa. In 1994 he established the first internet service provider in Ghana and many other countries in Africa.
Prof. Quaynor was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1949. He attended Adisadel College in Cape Coast and later got transferred to Achimota School in Accra. He moved abroad and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1972 and received a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Thayer School of Engineering in 1973. He then studied Computer Science, obtaining a Master of Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1974 and a Ph.D. from the same institution in 1977.
In 1979 Quaynor returned to Ghana to help bridge the computer divide with the knowledge he has acquired. He became a lecturer in physics and mathematics at the University of Cape Coast and helped established the Computer Science department. He set up the Network Computer Systems Limited which helped in the development and expansion of internet across Africa.
He also pioneered Africa’s first Internet connections and was involved in setting up some major organizations, including the African Network Operators Group and was a founding chairman of AfriNIC, the African numbers registry.
He was the first African to be elected to the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and served as an at-large director of ICANN for the African region from 2000 to 2003.
Dr. Quaynor was a member of the United Nations Secretary General Advisory Group on ICT, Chair of the OAU Internet Task Force and President of the Internet Society of Ghana.
Prof. Quaynor received the Internet Society’s prestigious Jonathan Postel Service Award for pioneering work to advance Internet in Africa in 2007. He was also inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013 just a year after the establishment of the institution, to honor people who have achieved excellence in the development and expansion of Internet in Africa.
Dr. Isaiah Blankson
Dr. Isaiah Blankson was a Ghanaian Aerospace engineer, scientist and inventor at NASA. He was an internationally recognized expert in hypersonics, magnetic levitation systems, and plasma and gas dynamics, Blankson left a vast body of work that earned him the nickname Dr. Speed.
Born in Cape Coast, Ghana, in 1944 and attended Mfantsipim Secondary School, Blankson excelled in his studies from a young age and achieved the highest score on a national examination. He received a scholarship to study in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a Bachelors, Masters, and PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Becoming the very first African to acquire a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics.
In 1982, Blankson joined General Electric’s Corporate Research Center (GRC), New York, where he conducted research on hypervelocity plasm a-armature projectile launchers and gas-dynamic circuit breakers. He went on to join NASA as program director of the Generic Hypersonics program in 1988, and was named deputy director of Hypersonics Research Division, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1991. He was promoted to senior technologist in the Hypersonics Division at NASA Glenn Research Center, in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1997. Blankson’s pioneering work advanced the state-of-the-art air-breathing hypersonic wave riders and aircraft engine concepts.
Blankson’s curiosity was legendary as he was always on the lookout for ways to contribute to research areas beyond hypersonics. He was a key contributor to the development of the novel exoskeleton engine that used a rotating drum to power the turbine blades in conventional turbofan engines, conceived of a camera utilizing millimeter-wave radiation to detect objects in opaque conditions, and, in recent years, spearheaded work on the use of electricity to purify water.
He was tasked with the crucial role of calculating the speed for spaceships which spans over a 30 year period he spent working at NASA. He received numerous honors during his career, including two Presidential Rank Awards, a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, and a fellowship in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. And served as a US delegate on a NATO Working Group on Hypersonic Vehicle Technology in 2006.
On November 19, 2021, at the age of 77 Dr. Blankson passed away.
Herbert Graves Winful
Herbert Winful is an electrical engineer. He was born in London but grew up in Ghana. His mother, Margaret Ferguson Graves was the headmistress of St. Michael’s School in Cape Coast, and his father, Herbert Francis was a civil engineer who worked on the Akosombo Dam during its construction and later became the executive secretary of the Volta River Authority.
Winful’s father took him a few times to the construction site where he was stunned by the process through which water from the dammed river turned the turbines that generated electricity. His interest in engineering was ignited.
He attended Catholic Jubilee School for his primary education and St Augustine’s College for his secondary education. He was so exceptionally clever that the headmaster of his school wanted to jump him from Class 3 to Class 6, skipping two grades.
He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1981. He joined the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers department at the University of Michigan as an associate professor in 1987, became a full professor in 1992, and was named a Thurnau Professor in 1993.
Winful has made fundamental contributions to nonlinear fiber optics, nonlinear optics in periodic structures, the nonlinear dynamics of laser arrays, the propagation of single-cycle pulses, and the physics of tunneling. He has published over 130 journal articles, supervised the research of Ph.D. students and won tons of awards.
In 2020 he was named the Joseph E. and Anne P. Rowe Professor of Electrical Engineering for his distinguished record of research, teaching, and service. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Winful also has a passion for music. He played the guitar and sometimes the piano in church during his Cape Coast school days. He has his own compositions and still continues to play the piano.
Professor Ebenezer Laing
Ebenezer Laing was a Ghanaian botanist and plant geneticist who served as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon. He was a professor at the University of Ghana, and later an emeritus professor. Laing, together with his university and faculty colleague, George C. Clerk was one of the first Ghanaian academics to specialize in botany as a scientific discipline and contributed significantly to the growth of the field in Ghana. He was also a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, inducted in 1965. In 1985, he was elected an inaugural Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.
Ebenezer Laing was born in Cape Coast on the 28th of June 1931. He attended the Adisadel College and did the sixth form at Achimota School. He went on to the University College of the Gold Coast, where he graduated with a First class and obtained the Basindale prize. After obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, he returned to the University of Ghana, where he served in many different capacities.
Ebenezer Laing was appointed a lecturer at the University of Ghana’s botany department and rose through the ranks to become a full professor. He later became the chairman of the botany department. His research was in plant genetics. During his long teaching career, he served several appointments at various departments at the University of Ghana including the Institute of African Studies, the Regional Institute for Population Studies, Department of Geography, Psychology Department, Department of Community Health at the University of Ghana Medical School, Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, School of Public Health as well as the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy.
He had a keen interest in music, including playing the Oboe, classical guitar, and the Piano. He played at many classical concerts with his friends, performing piano solos and duets as well as accompanying vocalists, violists, cellists, and flutists.
Laing Passed away in Accra on 19 April 2015 from natural causes. He was buried at the Osu Cemetery Accra. The road behind the university’s department of botany was named in his honor.
Herman Kojo Chinery-Hesse
Herman Kojo Chinery-Hesse is a Ghanaian technology entrepreneur and the founder of SOFTtribe, the oldest software company in Ghana.
Chinery-Hesse studied in America, and began his working life in Britain. He always wanted to be an entrepreneur and believed that was a way to develop Africa and to get wealthy. He said, “I didn’t have an option in America, I was a black African there; until Obama, we didn’t have a track record of leadership. It would be an uphill battle, whereas in Ghana the sky was the limit. Also, I’m African: we need development here and it’s Africans who are going to develop Africa. I felt a sense of responsibility, apart from the fact that I thought I’d have a brighter future here.”
He moved from the United Kingdom to Ghana in 1990. Chinery-Hesse had no money but did own a computer. With a friend, he began writing programs and selling them, eventually moving from a bedroom to an office.
His company SOFTtribe became one of the leading software companies in Ghana providing management systems to dozens of companies. One of its most popular programs is Hey Julor, an emergency alert system which instantly alerts the police, neighbors and local radio station sending them GPS coordinates in an issue of home robbery.
Over the years, the company has pioneered a number of groundbreaking products which includes, Payroll systems, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, Utility billing system, Point of sale systems and many more. His project “African Echoes” is aimed at creating African audiobooks for global consumption, such that Africans are in a position to tell their own stories to a worldwide audience.
His company has won many awards and accolades, including the GUBA award in the UK for Exceptional Achievement, the Ghana Millennium Excellence Award for IT, the Ghana Club 100 Award for the Most Innovative Company, the “SMS” App of the Year Award, the Mobile World Lifetime Achievement Award and the Best Entrepreneur in Information and Communication Technology.
Richmond Sarpong
Richmond Sarpong is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley where he and his group specializes in synthetic organic chemistry. Sarpong was born in Bechem, Ghana in 1974, and spent his early childhood in Bolgatanga. His mother was a teacher, and his father a medical doctor. He became interested in chemistry after seeing, firsthand, the effectiveness of the drug ivermectin in combating river blindness during his childhood. He spent his free time imagining how chemistry could change people’s lives.
Sarpong’s family moved to Zambia and later Botswana in 1986 where he witnessed the ravaging impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa. He moved to the United States in 1991 to study chemistry at Macalester College and graduated with Bachelor of Arts in chemistry. He then pursued graduate studies at Princeton University and received his Ph.D. in 2001.
Sarpong started his independent scientific career at the University of California, Berkeley as an assistant professor in 2004. He was promoted to associate professor in 2010 and full Professor in 2014. His laboratory, Sarpong Group specializes in the synthesis of bioactive organic molecules, with a focus on the natural products of flora and fauna. He has developed new synthesis strategies for alkaloids, a family of natural medicines that includes quinine and morphine. In particular, Sarpong is interested in natural product synthesis for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
Sarpong is committed to improving diversity within the chemistry community and has supported many scholars in the early stages of their academic careers. He has also received tons of awards and honors.
This brings us to the end of today’s video. Let us know in the comment section if there are any other Ghanaians we might’ve missed. If you haven’t watched part one of this video click on the link above or check the comment section. Thank you.
