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==External links==
==External links==

*[http://www.thesoydailyclub.com/MOS/pioneerco2.cfm] Glidden Co. soy history
*[http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/pjulian.html Bernhard Witkop memoir of Julian]
*[http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/pjulian.html Bernhard Witkop memoir of Julian]
*[http://www.depauw.edu/library/archives/dpuinventories/julian_collection_s3_f2.htm B. Witkop]
*[http://www.depauw.edu/library/archives/dpuinventories/julian_collection_s3_f2.htm B. Witkop]

Revision as of 15:33, 26 February 2007

Percy Lavon Julian
OccupationChemist
SpouseAnna Roselle Johnson
ChildrenPercy Lavon Julian, Jr. (born 1940) and Faith Julian (born 1944)
Parent(s)Elizabeth Lena Adams (1878-?) and James Sumner Julian I (1871-?)

Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was an American research chemist, and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine. While at Glidden, his chemical synthesis of human steroids from plant steroid precursors would lay the foundation for the birth control pill and cortisone. After leaving Glidden he started his own company and competed against Syntex, and testified before a US Senate committee to break their monopoly on synthesizing human steroids from the Mexican yam. His competition helped reduce the cost of synthetic steroids.[1]

During his lifetime he received more than 130 chemical patents. Julian was the second African American to receive a doctorate in chemistry. He was the first African American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African American scientist inducted from any field.[1]

Early life and education

Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama to Elizabeth Lena Adams (1878-?) and James Sumner Julian I (1871-?). James was a railway mail carrier for the United States Post Office, and his father was a slave.[2][3][4] Elizabeth worked as a school teacher. He grew up in the time of Jim Crow. Among his childhood memories was finding a lynched man hung from a tree while walking in the woods near his home. While it was generally unheard of for African Americans at the time to pursue an education beyond the 8th grade, Julian's father steered all of his children towards higher education. Julian attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. At the time, the college accepted very few African American students and its town was still segregated. Julian was not allowed to live in the college dormitories and initially stayed in an off campus boarding home where he was refused meals. It was days after his arrival before Julian found an establishment that would allow him to eat. Ultimately, he took work firing the furnace and doing other odd jobs in a fraternity house and, in return for his service, he was allowed to sleep in the basement and eat. He graduated from DePauw in 1920 Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian.[5] By 1930 Julian's father had moved the entire family to Greencastle, Indiana so that all his children could attend college at Depauw, he was still working as a railroad postal clerk.[2]

Julian wanted to obtain his doctorate in chemistry but learned it would be difficult for an African American. He was denied access to American doctorate programs because they felt that the only jobs obtainable post-graduation would be as instructors at all black colleges. After graduating from DePauw, Julian became a chemistry instructor at Fisk University. He then received an Austin Fellowship in Chemistry and went to Harvard University in 1923 for his M.S. Worried that white students would resent being taught by an African American, Harvard withdrew Julian's teaching assistantship and he was unable to complete his Ph.D. at Harvard. In 1929 Julian received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to continue his graduate work at the University of Vienna, and he received his Ph.D. in 1931. He studied under Ernst Späth and was considered an impressive student. In Europe, he found freedom from the racial prejudices that nearly stifled him in the States. He freely participated in intellectual social gatherings, went to the opera and found greater acceptance among his peers.[6][7] Julian was the second African American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry after St. Elmo Brady.[1][8]

Physostigmine

After returning from Vienna, he went to Howard University for one year, where met his future wife, Anna Roselle Johnson (Ph.D. in Sociology, 1937, University of Pennsylvania). They married on December 24, 1935 and had two children: Percy Lavon Julian, Jr. (1940- ), a lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin; and Faith Roselle Julian (1944- ).[5]At Howard, Julian got involved in university politics, he goaded a white chemist named Jacob Shohan into resigning. Shohan retaliated by releasing to the local African American newspaper the letters Julian had written to him from Vienna. The letters contained accounts of his sex life, and criticism of individual Howard faculty members. Julian's laboratory assistant, Robert Thompson, also charged he had found his wife and Julian together in a sexual tryst. When Thompson was fired for filing a lawsuit against the University, he released the letters that Julian had written to him from Vienna just as Shohan had. Through the summer of 1932, the Baltimore Afro-American published all of Julian's letters.[1]

William Blanchard then offered him a position to teach organic chemistry at DePauw University in 1932. Julian helped Josef Pikl, a fellow student at the University of Vienna, to come to the United States to work with him at Depauw. In 1935 Julian and Pikl completed the total synthesis of physostigmine, and confirmed the structural formula assigned to it. Robert Robinson of Oxford University was the first to publish a synthesis of physostigmine, but Julian noticed that the melting point was wrong for Robinson's end product. When Julian completed his synthesis, the melting point matched the correct one for natural physostigmine from the calabar bean.[1]

Julian also at this time extracted stigmasterol--which took its name from, Physostigma venenosum, the west African calabar bean that reportedly could serve as raw material for synthesis of male and female hormones.

Glidden

After being denied a professorship at DePauw in 1936 for racial reasons, Julian applied for a job at the Institute of Paper Chemistry (IPC) in Wisconsin. However, the Wisconsin city of Appleton where the institute was located, had a law forbidding African Americans from staying overnight. DuPont had offered a job to fellow chemist Josef Pikl, but declined to hire Julian, who had superlative qualifications as an organic chemist, apologizing that they were "unaware he was a Negro".[1]


W.J. O'Brien, a vice-president at the The Glidden Company, a Cleveland, Ohio paint company, and board member of IPC, Appleton, took the courageous gamble of offering Julian the position of director of research at their newly created Soya Products Division in Chicago, Illinois during a long distance telephone converstion. He was very likely offered the job by O'Brien because he was fluent in German and Glidden had just purchased a modern continuous countercurrent solvent extraction plant from Germany for the extraction of "vegetable" oil from soybeans for paints and other uses*Bernhard Witkop memoir of Julian

Julian supervised the assembly of the plant at Glidden when he arrived in 1936. He then designed and supervised construction of the world's first plant for the production of industrial-grade, isolated soy protein from oil-free soybean meal. Isolated soy protein could replace the more expensive milk casein in industrial applications such as coating and sizing of paper, and in the manufacture of paints. Just prior to World War II, Julian discovered that upon hydrolysis, soy protein could be used as a fire-extinguisher when converted into a foam by means of an aerating nozzle. It could smother oil and gasoline fires on board ships, before the flames could engulf the ship. This invention saved the lives of thousands of American sailors.[1][9]

Steroids

File:Julian IHS.jpg
Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) circa 1940-1950

Julian's research at Glidden changed in 1940 when he began work on synthesizing progesterone and testosterone from the plant sterol stigmasterol, isolated from soybean oil. His work made possible the production of these hormones on a large (kilogram) industrial scale, reducing the cost of treating hormonal deficiencies. Julian and his co-workers obtained patents for Glidden on key processes for the preparation of sex hormones from soybeans. In 1947, the NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal, its highest honour.[10]

On April 13, 1949, rheumatologist Philip Hench at the Mayo Clinic announced the dramatic effectiveness of cortisone in treating rheumatoid arthritis. The cortisone was produced by Merck at great expense using a complex 36-step synthesis developed by chemist Lewis Sarett starting with deoxycholic acid from cattle bile acids. On September 30, 1949, Julian announced an improvement in the process of producing cortisone from bile acids that eliminated the need to use osmium tetroxide (a rare and expensive chemical), and said, further, that by 1950, Glidden would begin producing closely related compounds which may have partial --cortisone--activity. Julian also announced the synthesis, starting with pregnenolone from soybean oil sterols of the steroid: cortexolone; Chem Eng. News,27,2936(1949); and possibly 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and pregnenetriolone, which he hoped might also be effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis (unfortunately they were not).[11]

On April 5, 1952, biochemist Durey Peterson and microbiologist Herbert Murray at Upjohn published the first report of a fermentation process for the microbial 11α-oxygenation of steroids in a single step (by common molds of the order Mucorales). Their fermentation process could produce 11α-hydroxyprogesterone or 11α-hydroxycortisone from progesterone or Compound S, respectively, which could then by further chemical steps be converted to cortisone or 11β-hydroxycortisone (cortisol).[12] After two years, Glidden abandoned production of cortisone from bile acids to concentrate on Compound S. Julian developed an excellent multistep process for conversion of pregnenolone{an intermediate in the synthesis of progesterone from stigmasterol}, available in abundance from soybean oil sterols to cortexolone. In 1952, Glidden, which had been producing progesterone and other steroids from soybean oil, shut down its own production and began importing them from Mexico through an arrangement with Diosynth (a small Mexican company founded in 1947 by Russell Marker after leaving Syntex). Glidden's cost of production of cortexolone was relatively high, so Upjohn decided to use progesterone, available in large quantity at low cost from Syntex, to produce cortisone and hydrocortisone.[13]

In 1953, Glidden decided to leave the steroid business which had been relatively unprofitable over the years despite Julian's innovative work.[14] On December 1, 1953, Julian left Glidden after 18 years, giving up a salary of nearly $50,000 a year, to found his own company, Julian Laboratories, Inc., taking over the small, concrete-block building of Suburban Chemical Company in Franklin Park, Illinois.[15][16] On December 2, 1953, Pfizer and Syntex acquired exclusive licenses of Glidden patents for the synthesis of Compound S. Pfizer had developed a fermentation process for microbial 11β-oxygenation of steroids in a single step that could convert Compound S directly to 11β-hydrocortisone (cortisol), with Syntex undertaking large-scale production of cortexolone at very low cost.[13]

Oak Park

Around 1950 Julian moved his family from Chicago to the suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, where the Julians were the first African American family.[17] Although some residents welcomed them into the community, there was also widespread antipathy towards them. Their home was fire-bombed on Thanksgiving Day, 1950, before they moved in. After they moved to Oak Park, the house was attacked with dynamite on June 12, 1951. The attacks galvanized the community and a community group was formed to support the Julians.[18] Julian's son later recounted that during these times, he and his father often kept watch over the family's property by sitting in a tree with a shotgun.[1]

In 1953, he founded his own research firm, Julian Laboratories, Inc. He brought many of his best chemists including African Americans and women from Glidden to his own company. He won a contract to provide Upjohn with $2 million worth of progesterone. To compete against Syntex he would have to use the same Mexican yam as his starting material. He borrowed and used his own money to build a processing plant in Mexico, but could not get a permit to harvest the yams from the government. Abraham Zlotnik found a new source of the yam in Guatemala for the company, and Julian appeared before the U.S. Senate in 1956 and testified that Syntex was using undue influence to monopolize access to the Mexican yam. Julian was able to reduce the cost of the steroid they produced from $4,000 a kilogram down to about $400 a kilogram.[1]

He sold the company in 1961, for $2 million dollars.[19] The U.S. and Mexico facilities were purchased by Smith Kline and his chemical plant in Guatemala was purchased by Upjohn. In 1964, he founded Julian Associates and Julian Research Institute, which he managed for the rest of his life.[20]

National Academy of Sciences

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 in recognition of his scientific achievements. He was the second African American after David Blackwell.

Death

Julian died of cancer on April 19, 1975 in St. Theresa's Hospital in Waukegan, Illinois and was buried in Elm Lawn Cemetery in Elmhurst, Illinois.[21][3][22]

Legacy

File:PercyJulianStamp.jpg
Percy Lavon Julian stamp released by the United States Postal Service, 1993
  • Received the Chicagoan of the Year award from the Chicago Sun-Times in 1950. [5]
  • He was honored on a stamp issued by the United States Postal Service in 1993.[23]
  • In 1975, Percy L. Julian High School was opened on the south side of Chicago, Illinois as a Chicago Public High School. In 1983, Hawthorne School in Oak Park was renamed Percy Julian Middle 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 him, as well as Julian Hall at Illinois State University, where he was on the board of trustees.[24]
  • In 1999 the American Chemical Society recognized Julian's synthesis of physostigmine as one of the top 25 achievements in the history of American chemistry.[25]

Archive

The Percy Lavon Julian family papers are archived at Depauw University. [26]

Patents

Publications


References and notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i "NOVA: Forgotten Genius". NOVA (TV series). Retrieved 2007-02-13.
  2. ^ a b 1930 US Census; Greencastle, Indiana with Julians; James owned his own home valued at $3,000; Julians siblings are: Julian's siblings include: James Sumner Julian II (1903-?) (Honorary Depauw 1970); Mattie Julian Brown (c1905-?) (Depauw 1926); Elizabeth Julian White (c1907-?) (Depauw 1928); Irma D. Julian Raybon (1912-1990) (Depauw 1933); and Emerson R. Julian (1917-1978) (Depauw 1938)
  3. ^ a b "Milestones". Time (magazine). May 5, 1975. Retrieved 2007-02-14. Died. Percy L. Julian, 76, prolific black research chemist; of cancer; in Waukegan, Illinois. Grandson of a slave, Alabama-born Julian won honors at Harvard and the University of Vienna on his way to garnering over 130 chemical patents. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Julian family in the 1900 U.S. Census; Montgomery, Alabama; He lived with his wife's siblings: Mather P. Adams (1884-?); George Adams (1886-?); Carrie L. Adams (1891-?); Ethel M. Adams (1893-?). James is listed as a mail carrier.
  5. ^ a b c "Life Chronology". DePauw University. Retrieved 2007-02-14.
  6. ^ "Percy L. Julian Is Awarded Doctorate in Chemistry". Washington Post. August 2, 1931. Percy L. Julian, associate professor and acting head of the department of chemistry of Howard University, has been awarded his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Vienna, his achievement being a combination of two years' residence abroad and the transfer of graduate credit from Harvard University. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  7. ^ "Julian Will Do Research in Chemistry in Austrian Universities". Washington Post. June 9, 1929. Nine members of the faculty of the college of liberal arts of Howard University have been granted leaves of absence for graduate study during 1929-1930, and one for two years beginning with the fall of 1929. Percy L. Julian will study organic chemistry and microanalysis at the University of Vienna and at Graz University. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  8. ^ "St. Elmo Brady". University of Illinois. Retrieved 2007-02-14.
  9. ^ Shurtleff, William; Aoyagi, Akiko (2004). "History of the Glidden Company's Soya Products / Chemurgy Division". The Soy Daily. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ^ "Dr. Percy L. Julian Is Selected for the Spingarn Medal". New York Times. May 24, 1947. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  11. ^ Gibbons, Roy (1949). "Science gets synthetic key to rare drug; discovery is made in Chicago". Chicago Tribune: p. 1. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  12. ^ Peterson DH, Murray, HC (1952). "Microbiological oxygenation of steroids at carbon 11" (PDF). J Am Chem Soc. 74 (7): 1871–2.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ a b Applezweig, Norman (1962). Steroid drugs. New York: Blakiston Division, McGraw-Hill. pp. pp.vii-xi, 9–83.
  14. ^ Shurtleff, William; Aoyagi, Akiko (2004). "History of the Glidden Company's Soya Products / Chemurgy Division". The Soy Daily. Retrieved 2007-02-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ "Julian leaves Glidden; will head own firm". Chicago Tribune: p. C6. 1953. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  16. ^ "Julian aids mankind with his knowledge". Chicago Tribune: p. 1. 1963. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  17. ^ "From Dreams to Determination: The Legacy of Doctors Percy and Anna Julian". Dusable Museum. Retrieved 2007-02-13.
  18. ^ "Arson Fails at Home of Negro Scientist". New York Times. November 23, 1950. Chicago, November 22, 1950. An attempt was made tonight to burn down the expensive home that Dr. Percy Julian, 51 years old, internationally known Negro research chemist, recently purchased in one of the most exclusive sections in suburban Oak Park. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  19. ^ "Inflation calculator". Retrieved 2007-02-14. Worth $13.5 million in inflation adjusted 2006 dollars
  20. ^ "DePauw Archives biography". Depauw University. Retrieved 2007-02-13.
  21. ^ "Dr. Percy Julian, Chemist, 76, Dies". New York Times. April 21, 1975. Leader in the Fight for Civil Rights Was Synthesizer of Cortisone Drugs. Dr. Percy L. Julian, an internationally known research chemist and a leader in the fight for civil rights, died Saturday in St. Theresa's Hospital, Waukegan, Illinois. He was 76 years old and lived in Oak Park, Illinois. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  22. ^ "Dr. Percy Julian, Chemist, Dies". Washington Post. April 22, 1975. Dr. Percy Lavon Julian, 76, an internationally known organic chemist and noted civil rights leader, died Saturday in St. Theresa's Hospital in Waukegan, Illinois. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  23. ^ "Black Hertiage Stamps". International Information Programs. U.S. Department of State. 2005. Retrieved 2007-02-18. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  24. ^ "Percy L. Julian High School". Retrieved 2007-02-13.
  25. ^ "Synthesis of Physostigmine". American Chemical Society. Retrieved 2007-02-13.
  26. ^ "Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) archive". Depauw University. Retrieved 2007-02-14.

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