Marcelle lapicque (1873-1960): The first black female European neuroscientist?

Marcelle Lapicque (1873-1960), a contemporary of Solomon Carter Fuller, was a neuroscientist who studied the electrophysiology of the neuromuscular junction at the Sorbonne in Paris. Though award-winning, extensively published and an enthusiastic mentor of women, she was written about almost exclusively in French in her lifetime, and her name has been forgotten in favor of her husband, Louis Lapicque (1866–1952), known for the integrate-and-fire model of the action potential. Although little was written about Marcelle’s ethnicity, her father, Severiano de Heredia, was a Cuban of African heritage – a mixed-race politician elected president of the Paris City Council, today written about as the “first Black mayor of Paris.” It is unclear if the discrimination Marcelle faced was purely due to gender, or whether her mixed African and Cuban heritage played a role as well.