Percy Lavon Julian

Obviously, the focus of the second semester of organic chemistry is organic synthesis and as I have mentioned numerous times, many synthetic organic chemists are engaged in the synthesis of natural products of interest because of their medicinal properties.

I found an interesting bio of a synthetic organic chemist named Percy Lavon Julian in "Chemical Achievers: The Human Face of the Chemical Sciences" by Mary Ellen Bowden.

"Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1899 - the son of a railway mail clerk and the grandson of slaves. In an era when African Americans faced predjudice in virtually all aspects of life - not least in the scientific world - he succeeded against the odds. He majored in chemistry at DePauw University, earning his way by digging ditches and by waiting on tables in a fraternity house[he lived in the attic]. After graduation he worked at Fisk Universtiy for two years as a chemistry instructor. He then completed a master's degree in organic chemistry at Harvard University and returned to teaching at West Virginia State College. In 1929 Julian began his studies at the Univeristy of Vienna, focusing on the chemistry of medicinal plants, and earned his doctorate in 1931. He and a fellow doctorate, Josef Pikl, took positions at Howard University and two years later moved to Julian's alma mater, De Pauw. There they accomplished the first total synthesis of the active principle of the Calabar bean - an alkaloid, physostigmine, used in the treatment of glaucoma.

Meanwhile German chemists were showing that the steroid sigmasterol - which Julian had obtained as a byproduct of the physostigmine synthesis but was also obtainable from soybeans - could be used in the preparation of certain sex hormones. In pursuit of this lead, in 1936 Julian wrote to the Glidden Company in Chicago, requesting some sample soybean oil. The Glidden vice president, W.J. O'Brien, was also on the board of the Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Julian had recently applied for a job as research chemist. After listening to his fellow board members bemoan the difficulty in hiring Julian because of a law forbidding African Americans from staying overnight in Appleton, O'Brien decided to offer him a job at Glidden.......Julian was promptly made Director of Research of the Glidden Soya Products Division where he remained until 1957, when he founded his own company, Julian Laboratories.

Julian and [Carl] Dejerassi were both involved in the exciting competition of the late 1940's and early 1950's to synthesize the hormone cortisone inexpensively. In 1949 Julian published a paper on a new synthesis for Reichstein's Substance S, which is also present in the adrenal cortex and differs from cortisone in lacking only one oxygen atom in a particular molecular position. Hydrocortisone is still widely produced from this substance."

http://www.bakersfield.com/school/blackhistory/julian.html
This one has his picture and more details about the significance of his work.

http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/acs-rop042299.html
More details about the significance of his work.

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