Hubert Mack Thaxton

From 1947-1971, Thaxton also held appointments in industry and in the private sector. Among the positions he held were as project engineer in charge of radar systems and radio and TV antenna systems at Sperry Gyroscope, Long Island, New York; chief engineer in charge of research and development of color television receivers and transmitters at Sylvania Electric; project engineer for the design of special purpose jet aircraft at the Curtiss-Wright Corporation; and director of the digital computer facility at the Kollsman Instrument Company. Some of this work included classified government contracting, and much of his work remained secret during his career. Some of his projects included work on atomic processes and long-range radar.

Starting in 1946, he also began teaching at the City College of New York, working as an instructor of evening mathematics courses. In 1971 he was appointed a full-time faculty member in the mathematics department, but his subsequent applications for tenure were denied. Thaxton took the matter to court, and a lengthy legal battle ensued over the matter of racial discrimination. He eventually won two of the cases against the City College administration, but passed away before the issue could be fully resolved and his tenure put into practice.

Thaxton began his career at North Carolina A&T State University, where he was a professor and a chair of the physics department. After a verbal altercation with the president of the university, Thaxton began teaching at Delaware State College (now Delaware State University) in 1944. There, he served as a professor and chair of the mathematics department. In 1946 he joined the faculty of Walter Hervey Junior College in New York, New York, where he again served as a professor and chair of the physics department. He remained at Walter Hervey for about two years.

Thaxton married Lydia Richardson of Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1941. They had two daughters.

Thaxton earned his doctoral degree in 1938, making him the fourth African American person in the United states to earn a PhD in physics. Thaxton was proceeded by Dr. John McNeile Hunter (Cornell University, 1937), and followed by Dr. Herman Branson (University of Cincinnati, 1939) and Dr. Halson V. Eagleson (Indiana University-Bloomington, 1939).

He then went on to pursue further graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his first degree there in 1936, earning an M.A. in mathematics. Thaxton then went on to pursue his PhD in physics at Wisconsin, where he studied nuclear physics under theoretical nuclear physicist Gregory Breit. His thesis focused on the splitting of protons with protons, and was titled "Scattering of protons by protons."

Thaxton attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., for his undergraduate degree, and graduated with B.S. degrees in physics, mathematics, and chemistry in 1931. In 1933 he also earned M.S. degrees in physics and mathematics from Howard.

Hubert Mack Thaxton (20 March 1909 – 3 January 1974) was an American nuclear physicist, mathematician, engineer, and the fourth African American person to earn a PhD in physics in the United States. Thaxton's research focused on proton scattering, which at the time was a largely unexplored area of study.

Hubert Mack Thaxton was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on 20 March 1909, to Henry Thaxton and Sarah Jamison. He attended Dunbar High School in Lynchburg, which was then the segregated high school for Black students in the district. The school desegregated in 1962, and eventually transitioned to the Paul Laurence Dunbar Middle School for Innovation. Thaxton graduated from Dunbar in 1927.