Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
this is one of the Towering figures of
chemistry in the 20th century and one of
the great African-American scientists of
all
time a brilliant chemist trust me a
volle personality WR a man whose
Devotion to science would not be denied
this man was exhibit a of determination
and never giving up will you state your
full name for the records my name is
Percy
[Music]
Julian noa's forgotten genius brought
the fascinating and largely unknown
story of Percy Julian's life to
television in
2007 but creation of the film began much
earlier we started raising money for
this project 7 years before the show was
on the air it's a 2-hour film
with drama very
expensive and that money was used to
dramatize Percy Julian's life and his
scientific
breakthroughs the story I will tell you
tonight is a story of Wonder and
amazement Julian pioneered lowcost
methods of mass-producing medicines from
Plants today arthritis is treated with
Cortisone and glaucoma with fiso stigma
me starring Ruben Santiago Hudson as
Percy Julian allow meow me forgotten
genius finally premiered in 2007
reaching nearly 5.7 million viewers and
now nearly 10 years later the film
remains timely and
impactful we know that these programs
have a life but usually we never find
out how they are used or what the
personal impact of a film that we make
can have for nearly 50 years National
History Day Has encouraged students to
conduct historical research on a topic
of their
choice more than 600,000 students from
around the world compete each
[Applause]
year the answer is right here in
2015 after seeing forgotten genius two
eighth graders competing in National
History Day decided to make Percy Julian
the subject of their entry Tatiana mlan
and Han V proposed the idea to their
teacher Monica blackshire when the girls
came to me to present Percy Julian I
said huh this would be a really good
topic because I don't know who he is and
so I had to go and do some research
myself to kind of see who he was and I
thought that it was amazing because I
feel like with National History Day
choosing something different is always
important and so I gave them the okay to
pick it as a topic and I told them to
fly it's really all them they do
everything
themselves the girls set to work
researching for their ambitious project
we needed like real archives some of his
scientific notes that he would take down
while exploring the chemicals in the
Calabar
Bean so they decided to contact Nova for
help Dear Miss Wallace this year my
partner and I are participating in the
National History Day competition this
year's theme is expiration encounter and
exchange it made my day it made my year
I mean I thought this is why we do
public television this is it this is why
it's so important it's all about the
mission and education that we strive so
hard to do this so one of the things I
did was I suggested to Tatiana and Han
that they contact the director of the
film and so he was able to give them
some insights because he had met Percy
Julian's son and daughter and other
people who had work with him it was a
lot of work but we managed to put it all
together into an exhibit there was a lot
of long nights early mornings and last
minute trips to the store but we managed
to get it all
done their hard work paid off so far we
have advanced through the school level
District level and Regional level and we
are hoping to be victorious at the state
level so that we can go to the national
competition sincerely Tatiana mlan and F
in May of 2016 they headed to Austin
Texas for the state finals we were
pretty confident when we got to Austin
we were sure we were going to place
taana and Han placed
third competing against 44 other
exhibits a judge actually came to us and
said it was really amazing knowing that
she's never seen Percy Julian and she's
been judging for about 20 years big
smiles having know in the classroom has
been a basic important principle for
Nova right from the beginning and it has
inspired a generation of students to
choose science as their profession
That's The Power of public media it's
very important for Nova to keep our
programs available and accessible to all
students and teachers in America