JULIAN, PERCY LAVON

(b. Montgomery, Alabama, 11 April 1899; d. Waukegan, Illinois, 19 April 1975)

organic chemistry.

Percy Lavon Julian was the oldest of the six children ofJames Sumner and Elizabeth Lena (Adams) Julian. His mother was a school teacher, and his father, originally a teacher, took a job as a railway mail clerk shortly after Percy was born. Although public education for Alabama blacks at the time rarely extended beyond eighth grade, in 1916 Julian graduated from the State Normal School for Negroes in Montgomery, which his parents had attended, and he entered DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. When he received his A.B. degree in 1920. Julian was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and named valedictorian of his class. For two years he served as an instructor in chemistry at Fisk University, then began graduate study at Harvard University, where he received his A.M. degree in chemistry in 1923. He remained at Harvard as a research fellow until 1926. He then served as professor of chemistry, for one year at West Virginia State College for Negroes and for two years at Howard University.

In 1929 Julian received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation to continue his graduate work at the University of Vienna. His research there under the direction of Ernst Späth on the alkaloids of Corydalis cava earned him the Ph.D. degree in 1931. He returned to Howard University as head of the chemistry department for one year, then was a research fellow and taught organic chemistry at DePauw University from 1932 to 1936. On 24 December 1935 Percy Julian married Anna Johnson, a sociologist. They had two children, Percy Lavon, Jr., and Faith Roselle.

When he was denied a professorship at DePauw because of prejudice against blacks, Julian became director of research of the Soya Products Division of the Glidden Company, Chicago, Illinois. Later he also was named director of research for Glidden’s Durkee Famous Foods Division and manager of the Fine Chemicals Division. In 1954 Julian started his own chemical firm, Julian Laboratories, which manufactured intermediates for industrial production of steroids. After selling his company in 1961 he continued as president for several years. In 1964 he founded the Julian Research Institute, where he served as director until his death from cancer at age seventy-six.

Julian’s financial success and fame enabled him to be a major force in the civil rights movement. In 1967 he was appointed cochairman of a group of successful black Americans who raised money for the Legal Defense and Education Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This fund enabled lawsuits to be brought to enforce civil rights laws. He was active in civic affairs and many national organizations and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1973.

Percy Julian’s significant research in the chemistry of natural products began with the total synthesis of physostigmine, an alkaloid isolated from Calabar beans and important in the treatment of glaucoma. This he accomplished in 1935 with the assistance of Josef Pikl, formerly a fellow student at the University of Vienna whom Julian had assisted in coming to the United States to work with him. Their total synthesis confirmed the structural formula assigned to physostigmine. Julian also at this time extracted from Calabar beans stigmasterol, a phytosterol that reportedly could serve as raw material for synthesis of male and female hormones.

Julian’s principal work during his eighteen years directing research at the Glidden Company was the development of processes for preparation of substances of commercial value from soybeans. When he arrived in 1936, the firm had purchased a new plant in Germany for the extraction of oil from soybeans for the production of refined oils for paints and other uses; he supervised the assembly of this plant at Glidden. Julian’s first laboratory task was to develop processes for further separation and purification of the various components of the extracted, oil-free soybean meal and to determine uses for them. Julian’s laboratory prepared refined protein products that could replace milk casein in industrial applications, such as coating and sizing of paper and in manufacture of paints and other Glidden products. Julian designed and supervised the construction of a plant to produce these soya proteins; its eventual daily output of forty tons of commercially important products made the Soya Products Division one of Glidden’s most profitable divisions. Soy protein was also developed as the base of an oxygenimpenetrable, fire-fighting foam used by the U.S. armed forces in World War II. Theremaining meal, following the separation of these protein products, was shown to be of value as a supplement in livestock and poultry feeds. Julian and his laboratory workers also developed derivatives of the crude oil fraction. including edible oils for preparation of margarine, saladoils, and dressings, and soylecithin, used widely as an emulsifier in manufacture of foods. As the scope of research expanded. Julian hired additional chemists, some of whom were his former students at DePauw University, and within ten years his research program developed into an important industrial laboratory.

A change in the direction of Julian’s research occurred in 1940 when he began recovering sterols from soybean oil. At that time clinicians were discovering many uses for the newly discovered sex hormones. However, only minute quantities of progesterone, testosterone, and the estrogens could be produced from the extraction of hundreds of pounds of spinal cords, testicles, or ovaries. Soybean oil was known to contain a mixture of sterols, and Julian perfected means by which soya sterols could be isolated and converted to these hormones. At one stage in processing the oil a porous, solid. foamliike soap could be produced, from which the soya sterols were extracted with solvents. Glidden manufactured large quantities of progesterone and testosterone, utilizing on an industrial scale the chemical reactions for the modification of sterols devised in Julian’s laboratory, which now included over fifty chemists. Julian and his co-workers published many articles on the chemistry of sterols in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and they obtained patents on key processes in preparation of steroids from soybeans.

In 1949 the importance of cortisone for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis produced a rush by many pharmaceutical firms to produce cortisone and its analogs, yet most of the syntheses were dependent upon scarce bile acid starting materials. Julian undertook the synthesis of cortisone from pregnenolone, available in abundance from soya sterol, and devised a multistep process for conversion of pregnenolone to cortexolone (Reichstein’s Substance S). with differs from cortisone in lacking an oxygen at the C-11 position. The industrial production of cortisone was revolutionized in 1952 when the Upjohn Company announced that oxygenation at C-11 could be accomplished in high yield by microbiological oxidation. This made progesterone, pregnenolone, and cortexolone valuable intermediates for the production of a variety of corticoid drugs, and Upjohn sought manufacturers capable of supplying the ton quantities needed.

It was at this time that Percy Julian left his position at Glidden to start Julian realized that an even more abundant plant source of hormones was a Mexican Diosorea, commonly called wild yam, rich in diosgenin. In a subsidiary in Mexico City, Laboratorios Julián de México, 16-dehydropregnenolone oxide was prepared from diosgenin and shipped to Julian Laboratories in the United States. There Julian and his team of chemists transformed “oxide” into many derivatives of cortexolone through a complex series of reactions they devised. These valuable intermediates were sold to pharmaceutical firms for production via microbiological oxidation of a wide variety of steroids of the cortisone family. In 1961 Julian sold his firm to Smith, Kline, and French Laboratories for 2.3 million dollars. In later years he continued his research on steroid chemistry as director of the Julian Research Institute. Percy Julian’s skill in guiding industrial research and his creativity in novel chemical syntheses are well illustrated in his publications and patents dealing with chemical manipulations of the structures of steroids.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Orginal Works. A list of Julian’s scientific publications and patents is in Bernhard Witkop. “Percy Lavon Julian, 1899–1975,” in Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences. 52 (1980). 223–266. His most important articles include “Studies in the Indole Series. V. The Complete Synthesis of physostigmine (Eserine),” in Journal of the American Chemical Society. 57 (1935), 755–757, written with Josef Pikl; “Sterols. IX. Theselective Halogenation and Dehalogenation of Certain Steroids (Part I)” ibid., 72 (1950), 365–366, writen with willian J Karpel; “sterols. XIII. Chemistry of the Adrenal cortex Steroids.” in Recent Progress in Hormone Research. 6 (1951).195–214: “Sterols. XV. Cortisone and Analogs. Part I 16a-Hydroxy and 16a, 17a-Epoxy Analogs to Cortisone,” in Journal of the American Chemical Society. 77 (1955). 4601–4604. written with Wayne Cole. Edwin W. Meyer. and Bernard M. Regan: and “Sterols XVI. Cortisone and Analogs. Part 2, 17a21-Dihydroxy4-pregnene-3.12.20-trione.” ibid., 78 (1956) 3153–3158, written with Chappelle C.Cochrane. Arthur Magnini, and William J. Karpel.

Addresses and written works for general audiences include “The Chemist as Scholar and Humanist,” in Chemist (American Institute of Chemists).42 (1965).101–104; “On Being Scientist. Humanist. and Negro, ’ in Stanton L. Wormley and Lewis H. Fenderson, eds., Many Shades of Black (New York, 1969), 147–157;and “Science, an Ally of the Humanities.” in American Scientist, 63 (1975).13–15.

Some personal papers are in the possession of Dr. Anna J. Julian.

II. Secondary Literature. W. Montague Cobb, “Percy Lavon Julian,” in Journal of the National Medical Association. 63 (1971), 143–150, and “Onward and Upward-Percy Lavon Julian, 1899–1975.” in Crisis, 85 (1978).166–171: Louis Haber. Black Pioneers of Science and Invention (New York.1970), 86–101;and Max Tishler, “Percy L.Julian, the Scientist.” in Chemist (American Institute of Chemists).42 (1965). 105–113. The text of the addresses given at a symposium to honor Julian on 12–13 May 1972 at MacMurray College is in the library of that college in Jacksonville, lllinois.

Daniel P. Jones