ALT Image of Marie Taylor surrounded by plants in test tubes, high resolution plant cells, and microscope objectives. Text within says: Marie Clark Taylor was the first Black woman to get a Ph.D. in botany and the first woman of any race to receive a Ph.D. of science from Fordham University. Her research focused on photomorphogenesis: the study of how light influences plant development. Her experiments investigated how photoperiods, or precise lengths of light exposure, affected the development of floral buds. Taylor was one of the world’s most prominent Black educators in Science, advocating for the use of live plant cells to study life in real-time using light microscopes. Her methods were so successful that President Lyndon B. Johnson requested she expand her teaching methods internationally and grants from the National Science Foundation to disseminate her methods in the US. Taylor's efforts made the use of live plant tissue to teach biology the educational standard in the US.

ALT Image of Edmond Albius surrounded by vanilla plants and pollen grains. Text within says: Edmond was born a slave in St. Suzanne, Réunion, a French island near Madagascar. Sent to assist the botanist Fereol Bellier-Beaumont as a child, Edmond was taught how to care for Beaumont’s many plants, including hand pollination. While vanilla was cultivated globally, at the time it would not grow beans. Edmond closely examined the flowers and found the stigma, the plant’s pollen receiving organ, and noticed a leafy lid covering it. Using blades of grass Edmond opened this lid and deposited pollen onto the stigma. Weeks later, as vanilla beans hung from the vines, Edmond’s discovery became the start of the vanilla industry. “It is entirely due to him,” quoted Fereol, that Réunion became a prosperous country. Edmond was then freed and given the last name Albius, but he never received any profits from his discovery. A statue of Albius was built in Réunion that honors his contribution to science.