Black History Month: Edward Alexander Bouchet

Edward Alexander Bouchet was the first African American to graduate from Yale and also the first to earn a doctorate degree (Ph.D.) from an American university.

Edward Alexander Bouchet was born in 1852 in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, William Bouchet, had come to New Haven in 1824 as the valet of his former slave owner, who had freed him. Edward Bouchet's father worked at Yale College for a time, as a janitor, and was prominent in the African American community, serving as a deacon at the Temple Street Church, the oldest African American church in New Haven. Edward Bouchet's mother was Susan Cooley Bouchet.

Edward Bouchet attended The New Haven High School from 1866 until 1868 and graduated from the Hopkins Grammar School in 1870. He was the valedictorian of his graduating class. In the fall of 1870, Bouchet entered Yale College along with the son of his father's former employer. At Yale, he studied mathematics, physics, astronomy, mechanics, five languages including Greek and Latin, as well as Logic and Rhetoric; he graduated summa cum laude in 1874, ranked sixth in his class, and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Bouchet continued his graduate studies at Yale, and earned his Ph.D., in Physics in 1876. His dissertation was on Measuring Refractive Indices. He was the first African American to earn a doctorate in any subject at any university in the United States.

After graduation, Dr. Bouchet's demonstrated brilliance and credentials did not afford him the opportunities (such as positions in research, or at top universities) typically available to people of his unusually high level of education. He spent the rest of his life as a well-respected teacher.

He taught chemistry and physics for many years at the Institute for Colored Youth, a Quaker institution in Philadelphia. Later on, Dr. Bouchet taught at St. Paul's Normal and Industrial School in Virginia, served as principal of Lincoln High School in Galipolis, Ohio, and was a professor at Bishop College in Marshall, Texas. He also held the position of business manager for a hospital in St. Louis and worked for a short time as a U.S. Customs Service inspector. He retired from college teaching in 1916 and lived in New Haven for the last two years of his life.

A former student of Dr. Bouchet's described him this way: "...He was a fine Christian gentleman , a consummate scholar, one who seemed very knowledgeable in all areas and yet was extremely modest and a person who set a wonderful example of politeness and graciousness for the community. ...Certainly it is impossible to assess the far reaching influence of Dr. Bouchet upon the hundreds of persons whose lives he touched."