Howard was founded as a small private undergraduate college and has transformed into a large private university. The Chemistry Department was preeminent in stimulating this transition. Chemistry first offered the M.S. degree in chemistry in 1923, before there was a Graduate School at the University; Chemistry became the first department to award the Ph.D. degree at the University, in 1958. As the first predominantly Black university to offer the Ph.D. degree in chemistry, Howard has produced more African American chemists than any other chemistry department in the world and has one of the largest chemistry departments in the District of Columbia.

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