Percy Lavon Julian

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Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was a pioneer of medicinal drug synthesis from plants.

He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine, as well as a pioneer in the industrial production of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol.

His work laid the foundation for the production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills in the steroid industry. He later started his own business to synthesize steroid intermediates from the wild Mexican yam.

His research greatly reduced the cost of steroid intermediates to large multinational pharmaceutical firms, while still increasing the use of several common medications.

He was one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in chemistry.

He was the first African-American chemist to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African-American scientist to be inducted (behind David Blackwell) from any field.

Early life and family

Percy Lavon Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 11, 1899, as the first child of six children born to James Sumner Julian and Elizabeth Lena Adams Julian. Both of his parents were graduates of what was supposed to be Alabama State University. James, his father, who had been a slave, was employed as a clerk in the United States Post Office's Railway Service, and his mother Elizabeth was a schoolteacher. James Sumner Julian II (1902-1903) (DePauw 1970) (Matie Julian Brown, 1905-1990) (DePauw 1926); Helen Davis (1912–1978) (DePauw 1938); and Emerson R. Julian (1917–1978) (DePauw 1938).

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Education and academic career

Julian's parents' participation in an education beyond the eighth grade was extremely unusual among African Americans, and they encouraged their children to attend higher education. Julian graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. The college accepted only African-American students. He was subjected to social stigmas due to the town's segregated nature. He was not allowed to attend a college dormitory first, and first stayed in an off-campus boarding home that refused to provide him with meals. He had to wait for days before finding a restaurant where he could eat. He later found work in a fraternity house at the firefighting table, waiting tables, and doing other odd jobs; in return, he was allowed to sleep in the attic and eat at the house. Julian debuted as a Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian in 1920.

By 1930, his father had moved the family to Greencastle in order to ensure that all his children could attend DePauw. He was still serving as a railroad postal clerk. James owned his own house, which was appraised at $3,000 (approximately $49,000 today).

Julian wanted to get his doctorate in chemistry after graduating from DePauw, but he found it difficult for an African American to do so. Rather, he obtained a job as a Chemistry tutor at Fisk University. He was awarded an Austin Fellowship in Chemistry in 1923, which enabled him to earn his M.S. from Harvard University. However, fearing that white students will be taught by an African American, Harvard's teaching assistantship made it impossible for him to complete his Ph.D. there.

Julian received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to continue his graduate studies at the University of Vienna, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1931. He studied under Ernst Späth and was deemed an excellent student. Europe granted him freedom from the racial stereotypes that had stifled him in the United States. He freely attended intellectual social gatherings, attended the opera, and found greater acceptance among his peers. After St. Elmo Brady and Edward M.A., Julian was one of the first African Americans to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry. Chandler is a lawyer from Chandler.

Julian taught at Howard University for a year after returning from Vienna. Julian became involved in university politics in part due to his position as a department head, sparking a series of scandals. He begged university professor Mordecai Wyatt Johnson (Ph.D., Harvard) to resign, prompting him to resign. Shohan retaliated in late May 1932 by publishing Julian's letters written to him from Vienna in the local African-American newspaper. "A variety of topics were discussed in the letters, from wine, pretty Viennese women, jazz, and dancing to chemical experiments and proposals for the new chemical building." He spoke of familiarity and some skepticism of Howard University faculty members, referring to one particular dean as a "ass."

Julian became embroiled in a personal rivalry with his laboratory assistant, Robert Thompson, around the same time. In March 1932, Julian had recommended Thompson for dismissal. Thompson argued against "alienating the interests of his wife," Anna Roselle Thompson, claiming he had seen them together in a sexual encounter. Julian counter-sued him for libel. When Thompson was fired, he wrote to the paper in a personal and personal letter sent from Vienna. "How he tricked the president [Howard] into accepting his proposals for the chemistry building" and "how he buffed his good friend into naming" a professor of Julian's choice. Julian's letters were published in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1932. Julian eventually resigned after the scandal and accompanying pressures.

Anna Roselle, a doctor of sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, married him on December 24, 1935. They had two children: Percy Lavon Julian, Jr., (August 31, 1940 – February 24, 2008), who became a well-known civil rights advocate in Madison, Wisconsin; and Faith Roselle Julian (born 1944), who lives in their Oak Park home and gives uplifting speeches about her father and his contributions to science.

William Martin Blanchard, a professor of chemistry at DePauw, threw him a much-needed lifeline at the lowest point in Julian's career. In 1932, Blanchard offered Julian a DePauw position to teach organic chemistry. Josef Pikl, a fellow student at the University of Vienna's University of Vienna, was then transferred to the United States to work with him at DePauw. Julian and Pikl completed the synthesis of physostigmine and revealed the specific formula assigned to it in 1935. Robert Robinson of Oxford University in the United Kingdom had been the first to publish a synthesis of physostigmine, but Julian found that Robinson's end product's quoted melting point was inaccurate, implying that he had not made it. The melting point coincided with the correct one for natural physostigmine from the calabar bean when Julian finished his synthesis.

Julian also isolated stigmasterol, which derives from the west African calabar bean that he hoped might be useful as raw material for human steroidal hormone synthetisation. Butenandt and Fernholz, Germany, had shown that stigmasterol, which had been isolated from soybean oil, could be converted to progesterone by organic chemistry at this time.

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