GRACIOUSLY SHARED WITH ME:
"I'm pleased to inform you that our Belizean born Dr. Arlie Petters has been acknowledged as one of the 25 Greatest Scientists of African Ancestry! The listing covers scientists going back to 1731 and four of the honorees were born outside the USA, with Belize taking a slot. I'm very proud of Arlie as he continues to be a beacon for our youths especially in Belize and USA. This is quite an accomplishment for Arlie and for his birthplace Belize. Please help to shatter stereotypes that there is no talent coming out of African Ancestry. You may also notice that he is the youngest honoree.

Below is the link to the article:
http://hrassoc.net/blog/modules/news/article.php?storyid=17
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Posted by Jim Jacobs
2008/5/12 10:30:00
ARLIE PETTERS (1964---)--Fields of study are physics and mathematics: Arlie Petters is one of four members of this list born outside of the United States. Petters, now a naturalized American citizen, was born in the Central American country of Belize. He received a B.A. and M.A. from Hunter College in New York and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). He has been a visiting mathematician at Oxford Unveristy, the Max-Planck-Institute fur Astrophsik in Germany, and the Geometry Center of the University of Minnesota. Currently, he holds the William & Sue Gross Chair of Mathematics at Duke University. He was the 2002 recipient of the Blackwell-Tapia Prize in mathematics. He has also been awarded a CAREER Grant Award from the National Science Foundation, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and a Bell Labs Cooperative Research Fellowship Award. In 2008, Petters was named by Queen Elizabeth II to Membership in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Petters is one of the foremost researcher in Gravitational Lensing and the development of the mathematical theory of lensing. He did this pioneering investigations over a ten year period from 1991 to 2001 and reported his findings in 13 research papers and a mathematical monograph. Dr. Petters's research has been the basis for predicting the nature of space time near black holes and developing new ways to test hyperspace gravity models and Einstein's General Relativity theory. Petters collaborates across disciplines with physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists. He has produced 30 papers and a book.

Sources:
Websites:
http://www.math.duke.edu/~petters/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlie_Petters
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/petters_arlie.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/04.html