Bettye W. Greene (1935-1995) is believed to be the first Black female chemist employed in a professional position at the Dow Chemical Company.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Greene earned her B. S. from the Tuskegee Institute in 1955 and her PhD from Wayne State University in 1962. At the Wayne State University, Green studied under Winifred Heller.
In 1965, Greene began working for the Dow Chemical Company in the E.C. Britton lab, named for Edgar C. Britton, the 1952 president of the American Chemical Society and Dow’s director of organic research. There, Greene served as a consultant on polymer issues in the Saran Research Laboratory. The Styrene Butadiene Latex group also often utilized her research and knowledge.
In 1970, Greene was promoted to senior research chemist and, in 1975, was promoted to senior research specialist. Before retiring from Dow in 1990, Greene was involved in numerous patents and inventions. She received a patent in 1985 for stable latexes containing phosphorous surface groups. She described this material as being useful in the coating of substrates with inorganic fillers.
Additionally, Green received another patent in 1986 for a composite sheet prepared with stable latexes containing phosphorous surface groups, that served similar purposes as her previous patent.
Finally, she received a patent in 1990 for a latex-based adhesive prepared by emulsion polymerization. Emulsion polymerization is a type of radical polymerization, which begins with an emulsion incorporating water, monomer, and surfactant. Radical polymerization is a method of polymerization, where a polymer is formed by the addition of free-radical building blocks (radical = atom, molecule, or ion with an unpaired valence electron). And surfactant is a compound that lowers the surface tension between a liquid and a solid, a gas and a liquid, or between two liquids.
In addition to chemistry, Greene also was a founding member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., which is a national service group for African-American women.