1. Dr. Ben Carson: the only neurosurgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head, and the first to perform intrauterine neurosurgery on a fetus in the womb.
2. Dr. Mae Jemison: the physician and engineer who also became the first black female astronaut in NASA history.
3. Dr. Charles Drew: the surgeon who pioneered research on blood plasma for transfusions and helped organize the first large-scale blood bank in the US.
4. Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston: the first female and first black physician to direct a public health service bureau.
5. Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller: the first black psychiatrist in the US and a major contributor to the study of Alzheimer's disease.
6. Dr. Helene D. Gayle: the first female and first black director of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, and a renowned HIV/AIDs researcher.
7. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams: the surgeon who performed the first successful open heart surgery on a human, and the founder of the first black-owned hospital in the US.
8. Dr. Patricia Bath: renowned ophthalmologist, inventor, and the first black woman to receive a medical patent.
Bath began her influential medical career when she became the first black doctor to complete a residency in ophthalmology at New York University. After practicing in Harlem and observing higher rates of blindness in black people than white people, Bath introduced a new discipline of medicine — community ophthalmology — to deliver primary care in underserved and minority communities.
Bath then became the first female ophthalmologist at UCLA and invented a new device to remove cataracts from the eye, called the laserphaco probe, which made her the first black woman to receive a medical patent. Bath is also an advocate for preventing and curing blindness and founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, DC.