Purdue Alumnus

Dolores Cooper Shockley
Making History: Dolores Cooper Shockley

Dolores Cooper Shockley (MS P’53, PhD P’55) was the first Black woman to earn a PhD from Purdue and the first Black woman in the United States to earn a PhD in pharmacology.

Shockley was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on April 21, 1930. She enrolled at Louisiana State University in 1947, intending to pursue a major in pharmacy with the goal of eventually opening her own drug store. During her college years, however, Shockley’s interests shifted from retail business to research. When she earned her bachelor’s of science in 1951, Shockley decided to continue her education in the field of pharmacology at Purdue. She earned her master’s in 1953 at Purdue, and then her PhD in pharmacology two years later. After graduation, Shockley was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to do postdoctoral research at the University of Copenhagen.

When Shockley returned to the US, she accepted an appointment as an assistant professor of pharmacology at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. She was greeted in her new job with a certain amount of suspicion, she later told an interviewer for Ebony, because, “Some men thought that I was just working temporarily.” She soon put those doubts to rest and became a valued and respected member of the faculty. In 1967, Shockley was promoted to associate professor, and 10 years later, she became head of the college’s Department of Microbiology. In addition, she has since served as Meharry’s foreign student advisor, and its liaison for international activities to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Shockley’s research interests have focused on the consequences of drug action on stress, the effects of hormones on connective tissue, the relationships between drugs and nutrition, and the measurement of non-narcotic analgesics (pain killers).

Read the full story on the Purdue Minority Engineering Program page.