Dominique Kemp has made history as the first Black person to earn a PhD in mathematics from Indiana University (IU).
The Lansing, Michigan native, homeschooled as a teen, earned his first degree in Mathematics from Stanford University before pursuing his PhD in the same field.
While he was a student, there were no black professors in the field, and he was the only student at the university during his last three years in the programme.
‘I was the closest the students got to having a Black Mathematics professor here at IU when I was an associate instructor. In 2018, I believe, I became the only one in the Mathematics PhD programme when the last of the other two Black students departed from the programme,” Kemp recalled.
Kemp is going to the University of Wisconsin for the next four years prior to taking a postdoctoral position at Princeton in 2023.
