George C. Royal

George Calvin Royal Jr (August 5, 1921 - November 24, 2016) was an African-American microbiologist. George C. Royal was also part of one of the few African-American husband-and-wife teams in science, working with Gladys W. Royal, Ph.D. on research supported by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. George C. Royal is a professor emeritus at Howard University.

Royal was born in Williamston, South Carolina, in 1921, the oldest boy of nine children of African-American and Native American descent. His father, George Sr., owned an auto garage there before migrating his family to Urbana, Ohio, during the Great Depression. Dr. Royal has six children: George Calvin Royal III, Geraldine Gynnette Royal, Guericke Christopher Royal, jazz musician Gregory Charles Royal, Michelle Renee McNear, and Eric Marcus Royal.

Royal attended Tuskegee Institute from 1939 to 1943, earning a B.S. in Biology before serving in the Army in World War II as a munitions sergeant, ending at the Battle of the Bulge in 1945. After the war, he attended the University of Wisconsin, where he received an M.S. in Microbiology in 1947. Royal took on positions as Bacteriology instructor at Tuskegee in 1947-48; research assistant at Ohio State University and Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station from 1948 to 1952. He was assistant professor of Bacteriology at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro from 1952 to 1955.

In 1955 Royal gained admission to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, where he received his Ph.D in microbiology as a predoctoral fellow in 1957. Dr. Royal was associate and professor of Bacteriology at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro from 1957 to 1965; and in 1959 he served a summer research fellowship for the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Biology Division, at Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies. He was the dean of the Graduate School at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro from 1961 to 1965. Following a postdoctoral study in allergy and hypersensitivity and an assistant professorship in Microbiology at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia from 1965 to 1966, he joined the faculty of Howard University from 1966 to 1993. He became professor emeritus in 1993.

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