Percy Lavon Julian

Percy Lavon Julian
Occupation	Chemist
Spouse	Anna Roselle Johnson
Children	Percy Lavon Julian, Jr. (1940—) and Faith Julian (1944—)
Parent(s)	Elizabeth Adams (1878-?) and James S. Julian (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. His chemical synthesis of human steroids from plant steroid precursors would lay the foundation for the birth control pill and cortisone. During his lifetime he received more than 130 chemical patents. Julian was the second African American to receive a doctorate in chemistry, after St. Elmo Brady. Julian was the first African American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African American scientist inducted from any field, after mathematician David Blackwell.

Early life and education

Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama to Elizabeth Adams (1878-?) and James S. Julian (1871-?). James was a mail carrier, and his father was a slave. 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.

Julian wanted to obtain his doctorate in chemistry but learned this was a long, hard road for an African American in his day. He was denied access to American doctorate programs because they felt that admitting African Americans was a waste since 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. He didn't complete his Ph.D. after Harvard withdrew his teaching assistantship, worried that white students would resent being taught by an African American. 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. Julian was the second African American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry after St. Elmo Brady.

Physostigmine

After returning from Vienna, he went to Howard University for one year. It was at Howard that he met his future wife, Anna Roselle Johnson (Ph.D. in Sociology, 1937, University of Pennsylvania). They would marry in 1935 and have two children: Percy Lavon Julian, Jr. (1940- ), a lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin; and Faith Julian (1944- ). At Howard, Julian got caught up in university politics, with disastrous results for him. Julian had goaded a white chemist named Jacob Shohan into resigning. Shohan retaliated by releasing to the local black newspapers the letters Julian had written to him from Vienna. The letters contained accounts of his sex life, and criticism of Howard faculty members. Julian's laboratory assistant, Robert Thompson, charged he had found his wife and Julian together in a 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.

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. Julian and Pikl in 1935 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.

Glidden

In 1936 Julian was denied a professorship at DePauw for racial reasons, he 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".

W.J. O'Brien, a vice-president at the Glidden Company, a Chicago paint company, offered Julian the position of director of research at the newly created Soy Products Division in. He was very likely offered the job by O'Brien, who was also a board member of IPC, Appleton, 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.

Julian supervised the assembly of this plant at Glidden upon his arrival in 1936. Subsequently, he 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.

Steroids

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.

In 1949 the importance of cortisone for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis motivated pharmaceutical firms to synthesize cortisone and its analogs from animal bile acid starting materials. Julian undertook its synthesis from pregnenolone, available from soybean oil sterols, devising a series of processes to convert pregnenolone to cortexolone which differs from cortisone only in lacking an oxygen atom at the C-11 position. The industrial production of cortisone became possible in 1952 when the Upjohn Company announced that oxygenation at C-11 could be achieved in high yield by microbial oxidation. This made intermediates such as cortexolone, progesterone, and pregnenolone valuable in the production of a variety of corticoid drugs.

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. 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. 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.

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 several contracts 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 built a processing plant in Mexico, but could not get a permit to harvest them 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.

He sold the company in 1961, for $2 million dollars. 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.

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 in April of 1975 in St. Theresa's Hospital in Waukegan, Illinois and was buried in Elm Lawn Cemetery in Elmhurst, Illinois.

Legacy

Percy Julian stamp released by the U.S. Postal Service, 1993.

Percy Julian stamp released by the U.S. Postal Service, 1993.

• 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.
• 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.

Patents

• U.S. patent 2,373,686; Jul 15, 1942; Phosphatide Product And Method Of Making
• U.S. patent 3,761,469; September 25, 1973; Process For The Manufacture Of Steroid Chlorohydrins; with Arnold Lippert Hirsch

Publications

• Studies in the Indole Series. I. The Synthesis of Alpha-Benzylindoles; Percy L. Julian, Josef Pikl; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1933, 55(5), pp 2105-2110.
• Studies in the Indole Series. V. The Complete Synthesis of Physostigmine (Eserine); Percy L. Julian, Josef Pikl; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1935, 57(4), pp 755-757.

External links

• Black-Scientists.com
• Bernhard Witkop memoir of Julian
• Percy Julian on blackinventor.com
• PBS Science Odyssey
• Chemical Heritage Foundation
• NOVA: Forgotten Genius
• Nova transcript
• Percy Julian at Find-A-Grave
• Julian Archives at DePauw University

See also

• St. Elmo Brady - first African-American to receive a doctorate in Chemistry
• David Blackwell - first African-American to become a member of the National Academy of Sciences
• National Academy of Sciences