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Amazing Facts About Foundational Black Americans
1935–1948 — Greencastle, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois
Tap the poster to enlarge · Canonical BHED artwork
Did you know a Black American chemist—whom a major university refused to let teach because of his race—pioneered the chemistry that helped make cortisone affordable and laid part of the foundation for the birth-control pill?
Percy Lavon Julian, the grandson of enslaved people, earned his Ph.D. in Vienna in 1931 and returned to DePauw University as a research fellow.
In 1935, Julian and his colleague Josef Pikl became the first to synthesize physostigmine, the glaucoma drug previously extractable only from the Calabar bean. Their work, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, even corrected an error in the research of Oxford's Sir Robert Robinson.
When his grant funding ended, DePauw's board refused to appoint Julian to the teaching faculty because he was Black. He moved to the Glidden Company, where he discovered how to isolate sterols from soybean oil and convert them into progesterone and other sex hormones at industrial scale.
His steroid chemistry helped make cortisone treatment affordable and laid part of the chemical foundation for the birth-control pill. The American Chemical Society designated his physostigmine synthesis a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 1999.
Percy Lavon Julian was born in 1899, the grandson of enslaved people. He earned his Ph.D. in Vienna in 1931 and returned to DePauw University, where in 1935 he and Josef Pikl completed the first total synthesis of physostigmine. When DePauw's board refused to appoint him to the faculty because he was Black, he moved to the Glidden Company, where he pioneered the industrial isolation of soy sterols and their conversion into progesterone and other steroids—helping make cortisone affordable and contributing to the chemical foundation of the birth-control pill. The American Chemical Society designated his work a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 1999. He died in 1979.
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