12 Facts About Titus Pankey

Titus Pankey was an American physicist and professor whose research specialties were magnetic susceptibility and cosmology, especially supernovas.

Titus Pankey was the first recipient of a PhD in physics from Howard University, and was one of the first 10 black recipients of a PhD in physics in the United States.

Titus Pankey has been cited as the first to suggest that type 1a supernovae are powered by nickel-56 decay.

Titus Pankey grew up between Hinton and Charlottesville, Virginia, where he graduated from high school.

Titus Pankey later worked in an electrophoresis lab at the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville.

Titus Pankey served in the US Army during the Korean War and was discharged in 1954 after completing his tour of duty.

Titus Pankey subsequently received his master's and PhD degrees from Howard in physics, completing his doctorate in 1962.

Titus Pankey speculated that the two stages of decay in the light curve are caused by radioactive nickel-56 rapidly decaying to cobalt-56 with a 6 day half-life followed by cobalt-56 decaying more slowly decaying to stable iron-56 with a 77 day half-life.

Titus Pankey's hypothesis was not widely circulated and did not get immediate attention at the time, but would later be independently reinvented and developed in detail in a 1969 article by Stirling Colgate and Chester McKee.

In 1957, while attending graduate school, Titus Pankey began work at the United States Naval Research Laboratory as a research physicist and cosmologist.

Titus Pankey taught at Howard until 1979, when he suffered a brain injury during a robbery and assault at his home in Washington, DC After recovering from the assault, he continued to conduct physics research at his home.

Titus Pankey was married to Anita-Rae Smith-Titus Pankey, and the couple later divorced.