Demetrius Dante Venable (born 11 October 1947) is an American physicist and professor emeritus at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Over his career, he has specialized in optical physics, and is known for establishing and developing physics programs at multiple historically Black universities.
As an undergraduate in 1968 and 1969, he participated in the Harvard-Yale-Columbia-Intensive Summer Studies Program at Columbia University, where he studied in the intermediate physics lab working on classical physics experiments at the university and worked with professor Lucy J. Hayner.
While at Virginia State as an undergraduate, he also worked with physicists Arthur Thorpe and James Davenport, who was the physics department chairperson at the time.
After receiving his PhD, Venable worked in the private sector for two years as a senior associate engineer at IBM in Fishkill, New York.
[6] Throughout his career, he has participated in various professional organizations, including the National Society of Black Physicists, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the Virginia Academy of Science, among others.