Julian, Percy Lavon 1899–1975

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Percy Lavon Julian 1899–1975

Chemist

At a Glance…

Determined to Succeed in the Face of Racism

A Groundbreaking Achievement

Produced Synthetic Cortisone from Soybeans

Established His Own Pharmaceutical Company

Sources

Known as the “soybean chemist” for his extraordinary success in synthesizing innovative drugs and industrial chemicals from natural soya products, Percy Lavon Julian was an internationally acclaimed scientist whose discoveries earned him more than 130 chemical patents and a host of professional awards. Among his most important contributions were the creation of a synthetic version of cortisone, a drug used to relieve the pain and inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis, and physostigmine, prescribed to alleviate the effects of glaucoma—a disease of the eye that can cause blindness if left untreated. Julian’s work with soybeans and soya derivatives also led to the mass production of the male and female hormones testosterone and progesterone and the development of a powerful firefighting chemical called Aero-Foam, used by the U.S. Navy during World War II. The first African American to direct a modern industrial laboratory, he spent 17 years with the Glidden Company in Chicago before leaving to establish his own successful pharmaceutical enterprise, Julian Laboratories, Inc.

In addition to his groundbreaking work in the field of organic chemistry, Julian was a leader in the fight for civil rights. A strong supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in 1967 he joined a group of 46 other black businesspeople in raising money to enforce civil rights legislation through the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Despite his personal and professional success, Julian’s own encounters with racism—from the college professors who refused to offer him a teaching assistantship to the hoodlums who firebombed his suburban home—were never far from his mind.

The eldest of six children, Percy Lavon Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1899. His father, James, who worked as a railway mail clerk, was the son of former slaves who went on to purchase their own small farm. According to Percy’s younger brother, Emerson, James Julian was a strict disciplinarian who had high expectations for his children. All six would later earn advanced degrees. One day, Emerson recalled, Percy rushed home from elementary school expecting to be congratulated for having received a score of 80 on an arithmetic exam. Instead of praising him, the elder Julian responded with disappointment, stating that anything less than 100 percent would never do. Julian took his father’s advice seriously and went on to graduate at the top of his class from the State Normal School for Negroes. He then entered Indiana’s DePauw University with the hope of studying organic chemistry. There he excelled in both his studies and

At a Glance…

Born April 11, 1899, in Montgomery, AL; died of cancer, 1975; son of James S. (a railway mail clerk) and Elizabeth Lena (Adams) Julian; married Anna Johnson (a sociologist), December 24, 1935; children: Percy Lavon, Jr., Faith Roselle, Rhoderic Education: DePauw University, B.A, 1920; Harvard University, M.A., 1923; University of Vienna, Ph.D., 1931.

Chemistry instructor, Fisk University, 1920-22; Harvard University, research assistant in chemistry, 1925-26; professor of chemistry, West Virginia State College for Negroes, 1926-27; Howard University, associate professor and acting head of chemistry department, 1927-29, professor and department head, 1931-32; research fellow and teacher of organic chemistry, DePauw University, 1932-36; Glidden Company, Chicago, director of research, soya-products division, 1936-45, research director and manager of fine chemicals development, 1945-53; president, Julian Laboratories, Inc. and Laboratorios Julian de Mexico, 1953-64; president, Julian Associates, and director, Julian Research Institute, 1964-75. Head of Council for Social Action of the Congregational Christian Churches, 1956; special consultant, National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases; member of board, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

Member: Phi Beta Kappa; National Academy of Science; fellow, Chemical Society of London, New York Academy of Science, and American Institute of Chemists.

Selected awards: Spingarn Medal, NAACP, 1947; Chicagoan of the Year, Chicago Sun-Times, 1950; Silver Plaque Award, National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1965; Chemical Pioneer Award, American Institute of Chemists, 1968; Procter Prize, 1974; inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame, 1990; commemorative stamp issued by U.S. Postal Service, 1993.

extracurricular activities and in 1920 was named valedictorian of his graduating class.

He soon discovered, though, that academic achievement and leadership qualities were not enough to guarantee him a place in graduate school. For a week Julian waited anxiously while his fellow students received offers of graduate fellowships at some of the country’s leading universities. Finally he could stand the suspense no longer and went to the home of his mentor, Dr. William Blanchard, who reluctantly showed him a handful of letters he had received from chemistry professors around the country. According to an article in Ebony, all of the correspondence advised Blanchard to discourage “his bright colored lad” from pursuing graduate study in the field. “We couldn’t get him a job when he’s done, and it’ll only mean frustration,” one professor had written. “Why don’t you find him a teaching job in a Negro college in the South? He doesn’t need a Ph.D. for that.” In Many Shades of Black, published nearly half a century later, Julian recalled his pain and anger upon learning that all of his hard work had come to nothing. “There went my dreams and hopes of four years, and as I pressed my lips to hold back the tears, I remembered my breeding, braced myself, and thanked him [Dr. Blanchard] for thinking of me,” he wrote.

Determined to Succeed in the Face of Racism

Although Julian’s father advised him to give up the idea of a career in chemistry to enter medicine, a field which offered more opportunities for blacks, Julian was determined to persevere in his chosen course of study. Louis Haber, writing in Black Pioneers of Science and Invention, traced the fledgling chemist’s interest in the subject back to a boyhood incident: ever since the day when, as a small child, he had peered through the window of an all-white high school to watch a group of boys at work in a chemistry lab, Julian had wanted to be a chemist. After graduating from DePauw, he took the advice of his professors and accepted a teaching position at Fisk University, a black college in Tennessee. Two years later he was awarded an Austin Fellowship to continue his graduate studies at Harvard. He received his master’s degree in chemistry in 1923.

Students of Julian’s academic rank were ordinarily offered the opportunity to serve as teaching assistants. But according to Paul de Kruif of Reader’s Digest, the powers-that-be at Harvard felt that because Julian was black, Southern white students “might not accept him as a teacher.” He remained at Harvard for the next several years under a series of minor research fellowships, waiting on tables, stoking coal, and working at a variety of other part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. In 1926 he accepted a teaching position at the West Virginia State College for Negroes but was so disillusioned by the lack of facilities and intellectual stimulation that he left after only one year. The following year he was offered the position of acting head of the department of chemistry at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He remained there for two years, during which time he helped to plan and oversee the construction of a new, $1 million chemistry lab.

Julian interrupted his teaching career in 1929 when he was awarded a General Education Board Fellowship to continue his graduate studies at the University of Vienna. There he worked side by side with the eminent Viennese chemist Ernst Spath, who had won wide recognition for his synthesis of the drugs nicotine and ephedrine. Like Spath, Julian was intrigued by the ways in which nature converted simple organic compounds into complex substances, such as vitamins and hormones. In an effort to supplement the limited supply of chemical riches produced by plants and animals, the two worked tirelessly to duplicate these patterns of natural conversion in the laboratory. In so doing, they helped to advance the bold, new frontiers of synthetic chemistry.

Among Julian’s many areas of investigation was the soybean, a product which was then being used in Germany for the manufacture of a variety of drugs, including physostigmine. Physostigmine, originally isolated from the seeds of the Physostigma plant in 1865, causes the pupil of the eye to contract and is thus useful in the treatment of glaucoma. If untreated, glaucoma causes pressure within the eyeball to increase to such an extent that the retina—the light-sensitive layer that lines the interior of the eye—is destroyed, resulting in blindness. In the early 1930s, scientists did not understand why physostigmine reduced pressure within the eye, nor were they able to obtain sufficient quantities from nature to provide patients with the treatment they needed.

A Groundbreaking Achievement

After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1931, Julian returned to the United States to continue his career in teaching. He spent one more year at Howard University, and then, at the invitation of his former professor, Dr. Blanchard, returned to DePauw University as a research fellow and teacher of organic chemistry. At Howard, Julian, together with two of his colleagues from Vienna, had begun an extensive investigation into the structure and synthetic production of physostigmine. When Julian moved to DePauw in 1932, Dr. Blanchard, then dean of the college, arranged for a special laboratory to be designed and equipped for him. At the lab, Julian, the Viennese chemist Dr. Josef Pikl, and six graduate students buried themselves in their research. Before long, their work on the synthesis of physostigmine, much of which was published in monograph form in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, had attracted the attention of the international scientific community. Finally, in 1935, Julian and Dr. Pikl succeeded in producing an exact synthetic replica of physostigmine. Their discovery was hailed by scientists from around the world and the details published in a host of scholarly texts and journals.

Despite his momentous accomplishments in the laboratory, Julian continued to encounter racial prejudice within the academic community. Upon completion of his groundbreaking work with physostigmine, Dean Blanchard recommended that Julian be named head of the chemistry department at DePauw. This would have made him the first African American chemistry professor at a predominantly white American university. But Blanchard’s colleagues immediately objected to the suggestion, claiming that the appointment would be ill-advised.

Around the same time, the Glidden Company, one of the country’s largest paint, varnish, and chemical manufacturers, was seeking a research chemist to direct a study of the protein-rich soybean. Hearing of Julian’s achievements, Glidden’s vice-president contacted him and offered him the position of chief chemist and director of the company’s soya-products division. Worn out by racial conflict in the academic world and eager to face a new challenge, Julian accepted immediately. Nine years later he was named director of research and manager of fine chemicals development. “Never before had a black man served in so esteemed a position within the firm,” wrote Hamilton Bims in Ebony. “The association lasted some 17 years, and Dr. Julian was idolized by his employers and subordinates.”

Julian’s first project at Glidden was to devise a technique for coating paper using soya protein in place of a more expensive milk protein. Some years later the same soya protein was used in the manufacture of Aero-Foam, a firefighting solution that extinguished oil and gasoline fires by forming an impenetrable blanket over them. According to Haber, the solution, which was nicknamed “bean soup,” helped save the lives of thousands of sailors and naval airmen during World War II. Julian’s research with soybeans also resulted in an innovative technique for manufacturing synthetic hormones. Hormone deficiency, which often occurs in people of advancing age, can result in cancer, extreme fatigue, and a variety of other medical problems. Although many hormones can be found in sterols—or solid alcohols—produced by certain animals and vegetables, these sterols are often difficult to extract, or available in very short supply. Using a chemical solvent made of quicklime and plaster of Paris, Julian devised an effective method of extracting sterols from soybean oil. His work resulted in a tremendous increase in the world supply of synthetic progesterone and testosterone, as well as a significant reduction in the cost of hormone treatments.

Produced Synthetic Cortisone from Soybeans

Another of Julian’s crowning achievements at Glidden—perhaps the most important of his career—was the synthesis of cortisone from soybean sterols. Cortisone, often referred to as one of science’s “miracle drugs,” is effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (a chronic disease that causes pain, stiffness, and damage to the joints) and other inflammatory diseases and is now widely available. But in the 1940s, the only way to obtain cortisone was to extract it from the bile of slaughtered oxen. To treat a single patient for one year required the bile from nearly 15,000 animals. Because of the limited supply, the cost of the compound was sky-high—certainly out of reach of the majority of patients who needed it most.

Through his experimentation with soybean sterols, Julian came up with a drug he called cortexolone, or Substance S. The only difference between the molecular structure of Substance S and that of cortisone was that Substance S was missing a single oxygen atom. Before long Julian devised a way to add the missing atom to his compound, and by the end of the decade, synthetic cortisone was available to ease the pain of millions of arthritis sufferers. “The synthesis of cortisone, and other of Dr. Julian’s successes, have been widely acclaimed as singular achievements,” noted Bims in Ebony. “Yet equally important has been his success in making [such] treatments economical—thus available to all. No ivory tower scientist, he has succeeded consistently in working out ways for the efficient production and marketing of his work.”

In 1950 Julian was named “Chicagoan of the Year” for his outstanding contributions to the field of chemistry. Yet, as documented in Black Pioneers of Science and Invention, he continued to be plagued by racial discrimination. Not long after the awards ceremony, he and his wife bought a large home in the exclusive, all-white community of Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. On Thanksgiving Day—even before the Julian family had moved in—a band of angry whites attempted to burn the house down. Luckily the disturbance alerted neighbors, who called the fire department in time to save the home. Although the attack was formally denounced by members of the community and by a coalition of Chicago clergymen, less than one year later a dynamite bomb thrown from a car exploded under the bedroom window of the Julian children. The children escaped injury, but their father was incensed. He suffered yet another indignity in the summer of 1951, when, having been invited to participate in a scientific conference at the city’s Union League Club, he was informed at the last moment that it was against the rules for people of color to attend.

Established His Own Pharmaceutical Company

Julian left the Glidden Company in 1953 to establish his own firm, Julian Laboratories, Inc., in Chicago, and a subsidiary, Laboratorios Julian de Mexico, in Mexico City. Both companies specialized in the production of synthetic cortisone. His research soon revealed that Mexico’s wild yams were an even better source for his products than soybeans, and within a few years, Julian Laboratories had become one of the world’s largest producers of pharmaceuticals synthesized from wild yams. After ten years, however, Julian found the pressure of running two large, international businesses overwhelming. In 1964 he sold both of his companies to the Philadelphia pharmaceutical manufacturer Smith, Kline & French for the sum of nearly $2.4 million. He then went on to establish two smaller enterprises in Franklin Park, Illinois: Julian Associates and the Julian Research Institute. There he was able to continue his basic research. He also served as a special consultant to the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases.

During the last ten years of his life, Julian devoted much of his energy to the civil rights movement. The first African American, as well as the first layperson to direct the Council for Social Action of the Congregational Christian Churches, he also served as co-chairman of the National Business and Professional Committee of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund. This organization helped to raise money for the legal defense of black people throughout the country. Over the years, Julian received honorary degrees from a dozen universities and served on the boards of numerous professional, scientific, and civic organizations. He also earned a host of prestigious honors, including the 1947 Spingam Award from the NAACP, the Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists, and the Procter Prize for extraordinary service to science and humanity.

Reluctant to curb his scientific and professional activities even in the face of cancer, Julian continued to work in his laboratory and attend speaking engagements around the country until shortly before his death in 1975. The little remaining energy he had he devoted to his family—and to the care of his 10,000 prize-winning tulips. His spirit lives on in dozens of lifesaving discoveries, as well as in the halls of Percy L. Julian Junior High School in Oak Park, Illinois, which, in 1985, was renamed in honor of the community’s most famous native son. “I have had one goal in my life,” Julian was quoted as saying in Ebony, “that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me.” In 1990, following ten years of pressure from minority members of the National Patent Lawyers Association, Percy Lavon Julian was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, making him one of the first black scientists to be honored in this way.