Samuel P Massie

Dr. Samuel Proctor Massie, Jr. (July 3, 1919 – April 10, 2005) was elected as the third President of North Carolina College at Durham on August 9, 1963. Dr. Massie came to the institution from Washington, D. C., where he was Associate Program Director for Undergraduate Science Education of the National Science Foundation and Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Howard University. He resigned on February 1, 1966 and served as a chemistry professor at the United States Naval Academy from 1966 to 1993.

During his tenure in Annapolis, Massie served on the academy’s equal employment opportunity committee and helped establish a black studies program. His portrait was hung in the National Academy of Sciences Gallery in 1995. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Energy created the Dr. Samuel P. Massie Chair of Excellence, a $14.7 million grant to nine historically black colleges and one for Hispanic students to further environmental research.

An elementary school in Prince George's County, Maryland, is named in Massie's honor.