Inspiring STEM Pathways: Jim West

James West grew up in the American South under discriminatory “Jim Crow” laws that legalized racial segregation, but with an interest in science and engineering from the time he took apart his father’s pocket watch as a child. After serving in the Korean War, he studied at Temple University in Philadelphia, and was then employed at the renowned Bell Labs research facility in New Jersey. After studying how microphones and speakers worked and noticing an anomaly in the then-new material Teflon, he invented the electret microphone, now used widely in cell phones and other electronics. After retiring from Bell Labs, he was named a professor at Johns Hopkins University and continues to invent and mentor young African American scientists and engineers.

Inspiring STEM Pathways, a Smithsonian's Lemelson Center project, presents first-hand accounts from interviews with living inventors who work in a variety of fields and organizations. The videos and learning materials are intended to encourage students to pursue STEM fields by seeing role models speaking about their interests and passions, challenges they encountered and how they overcame them, and how they draw on curiosity and resiliency in their daily work.

Visit https://invention.si.edu/inspiring-st... for details and educational resources.