Samuel Nabrit, 98; University President, Marine Biologist

Samuel Nabrit, 98, a former president of Texas Southern University who was also an accomplished marine biologist and the first African American to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission, died Dec. 30 at a hospital in Atlanta of complications from a heart attack.

The son of a Baptist preacher, Nabrit was born in Macon, Ga. He graduated from Morehouse College and went on to Brown University, where he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in biology.

He was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Brown and later became that university’s first black trustee.

Nabrit worked as a marine biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass. He conducted research from 1927 to 1932 on the tailfins of fish.

His findings about the size and growth rate of fins in regeneration was widely published in scientific journals.

He became the second black scientist to become a board member at the Woods Hole facility.

He went on to head the biology department of Morehouse from 1932 to 1947 and was dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences at Atlanta University from 1947 to 1955.

In 1955, he was named president of Texas Southern University in Houston, a post he held until 1966.

In 1966, President Johnson appointed Nabrit to the Atomic Energy Commission.

He was the first black to hold such a post. He remained on the board until 1969.

From 1967 to 1981, he headed the Atlanta-based Southern Fellowship Fund, which he founded to help supply black students with the money to earn doctoral degrees.