Henry T. Sampson is an African American inventor, best known for creating the world’s very first cell.
On July 6, 1971, he was awarded a patent, with George H. Miley, for a gamma-electrical cell, a device that produces a high voltage from radiation sources, primarily gamma radiation, with proposed goals of generating auxiliary power from the shielding of a nuclear reactor.
Sampson, a native of Jackson, Mississippi, who received a Bachelor’s degree in science from Purdue University in 1956, also graduated with a MS degree in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1961.
He was also the first African American student to earn a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering in the United States, from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1967.
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