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| Dr. Percy Julian |
What could this person have accomplished if the world he or she was born into had been more co-operative?
What might this person have been able to focus on if their early lives had been more amenable to study?
Well, nothing can be done about it now.
Dr. Percy Julian was born in 1899 in Montgomery, Alabama. He was the grandson of enslaved Americans. His father worked as a postal clerk on the railroad, and his mother was...wait for it...a school teacher.
School teachers absolutely rock. Just thought I would throw that in here.
Anyway, Percy's parents encouraged him to study and work hard in school. Unfortunately, there were no schools for black children beyond the eighth grade. His parents encouraged him to apply to DePauw University in Greencastle, IN as a "sub freshman". I'd never heard this term before. The word means a person preparing to be a freshman.
He had to take high school classes on top of his college classes so he could keep up with his classmates.
His biggest challenge was housing. He could not stay in the dorms on campus because they didn't have any negro accommodations. The boarding house he found would let him stay there, but the woman absolutely refused to cook for him. It took some time before he found a place he could eat.
Eventually, he cleaned a frat house and served meals in return for a room in the attic.
This problem of there being no infrastructure or willingness to deal with a black man was a theme throughout his career in America.
Despite all of the nonsense of trying to find a place to live and eat while taking remedial classes and college classes, Percy graduated Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian of his class in 1920.
His first teaching job was at Fisk University. It was all right, but what he really wanted was to get a doctorate. He applied to and was accepted to Harvard in 1923. He was given a teaching fellowship.
Harvard was quite shocked when he showed up and turned out to be a black man. They allowed him to get his masters in chemistry, but they were uncomfortable letting a black man teach white students, so they withdrew his teaching fellowship and did not allow him to get his doctorate. Time to get another job.
He got a job at Howard University in the chemistry department.
While working at Howard, he obtained a scholarship to study at the University of Vienna in Austria. He loved living in Europe. For the first time, he was accepted by the intellectual community of students as a peer. It was helpful that he spoke fluent German.
In 1931, Dr. Julian was awarded his P.H D. in Chemistry from the University of Vienna.
He returned from Europe - got involved in some seriously shady nonsense at Howard and was asked to leave.
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| Calabar Beans |
In 1935, he isolated Physostigmine from Calabar Beans. You might ask, as I did, what the heck does that do?
It treats glaucoma.
Dr. Percy Julian synthesized the drug that treats glaucoma.
You would think that DePauw University would be falling all over itself to put this man front and center. You would be wrong.
They refused to make him a full professor.
By this time, Dr. Julian had had it with academia. He decided to try his hand in private industry. This turned out to be more difficult than it should have been.
His credentials were stellar, and he'd created the freaking treatment for glaucoma. He was offered a couple of prestigious jobs. Dupont hired him, but when he showed up they apologized to him. They had no idea he was negro, and they could not hire him.
He was also hired by the Institute for Paper Chemistry (IPC) in Appleton, WI. Unfortunately, Appleton was a sundown town. Basically, the law said that no minority was allowed to be in the city limits after sundown, so he couldn't take that job either.
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| Soybeans |
Over the course of a few conversations, he hired Dr. Julian to be Head of Research in the Soya Department, and that's when things got wild.
German scientists were isolating hormones that might be able to control sex hormones in females, other scientists were discovering that cortisols could be used to treat ailments like rheumatoid arthritis.
The biggest problem with these discoveries is that the process of producing even small amounts of these hormones was expensive and there was no way to make them practical.
Enter Dr. Julian. He not only figured out how to synthesize these hormones from soybeans, but how to do it on an industrial scale. The process he created is still in use today.
For the first time, medicines like cortisone, steroids and the birth control pill became available in large enough quantities to make them affordable for everybody.
He stayed with Glidden until 1953. In 1954 he established Julian Laboratories. In 1961 he sold it and became one of the first black millionaires.
He holds numerous patents for his discoveries.
He spent his later life advocating for more diversity in the sciences and in education.
He founded the Julian Research Institue which he chaired and ran until his death in 1975.
As you can imagine, now that he is dead, his accomplishments have been trumpeted from every corner. People have said things of him like:
in 1999 his synthesis of physostigmine was recognized by the American Chemical Society as “one of the top 25 achievements in the history of American chemistry.”
He's been given a gigantic list of honors. He's in the Inventor's Hall of Fame, of course. Here is a copy and paste from Wikipedia.
Though it is a long list, I kept finding other things people had awarded him that aren't on this list. I stopped looking. That's a rabbit hole I wasn't certain I could escape.
- In 1950, the Chicago Sun-Times named Percy Julian the Chicagoan of the Year.[21]
- Since 1975, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers has presented the Percy L. Julian Award for Pure and Applied Research in Science and Engineering.[48]
- In 1975, Percy L. Julian High School was opened on the south side of Chicago, Illinois as a Chicago public high school.
- In 1980, the science and mathematics building on the DePauw University campus was rededicated as the Percy L. Julian Mathematics and Science Center. In Greencastle, Indiana, where DePauw is located, a street was named after Julian.
- In 1985, Hawthorne School in Oak Park, Illinois, was renamed Percy Julian Middle School.[49]
- Illinois State University, where Julian served on the board of trustees, named a hall after him.[50]
- A structure at Coppin State University is named the Percy Julian Science Building.
- In 1990, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.[51]
- In 1993 Julian was honored on a stamp issued by the United States Postal Service.[52][53]
- In 1999, the American Chemical Society recognized Julian's synthesis of physostigmine as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.[54]
- In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Percy Lavon Julian on his list of 100 Greatest African-Americans.[55]
- In 2011, the qualifying exam preparation committee at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine was named for Percy Julian.
- In 2014, Google honored him with a Doodle.[56][57][58]
- In 2019, asteroid 5622 Percyjulian, discovered by Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in 1990, was named in his memory.[59] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 27 August 2019 (M.P.C. 115893).[60]
- (Click this link to go to Wikipedia and use all of the above links!)
Depauw University seems to have found it in their heart to embrace Dr. Julian's accomplishments after all.
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| Thank you for making this possible |
We owe him a huge debt of gratitude for not giving up on himself or us.
Celebrate Black History!
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