Percy Julian

Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) was an African American chemist whose pioneering synthesis of plant-derived steroids made cortisone and other hormone-based medicines widely available for the first time. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the grandson of former slaves. Alabama's public schools did not offer education beyond the eighth grade to Black children at the time, but his parents — a railway mail clerk and a teacher — insisted on his further education. He entered DePauw University in Indiana as what the institution called a sub-freshman, taking high school classes alongside his college studies, and graduated as valedictorian in 1920. American graduate programmes in chemistry were largely closed to Black students; he was refused admission at several top universities and taught for several years at historically Black colleges before winning a fellowship for graduate work at Harvard. Harvard gave him a master's degree but denied him the chance to teach or to complete a doctorate because of his race. He eventually earned his doctorate in Vienna in 1931, one of the few options then available. In 1935 he completed the total synthesis of the alkaloid physostigmine, used to treat glaucoma, beating a competing English group. Unable to get university chemistry positions because of his race, he joined the Glidden Company, a paint manufacturer, where he led research that developed industrial methods for producing steroids from soybean oil — processes that made cortisone affordable to patients with rheumatoid arthritis and opened the way to a generation of hormone-based medicines. He later founded his own company. He and his family faced racist violence in the Chicago suburb where they bought a house in 1950, including attempts to burn and bomb their home. He died in 1975. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, the second African American so honoured.

Origin

United States

Lifespan

1899-1975

Era

20th century

Subjects

Chemistry Organic Synthesis Steroids African American Science Industrial Chemistry

Skills

Scientific Thinking Research Skills Ethical Thinking Critical Thinking Cultural Heritage And Identity

Why They Matter

Percy Julian matters for three linked reasons. First, his chemistry is of the first rank. His 1935 synthesis of physostigmine, a naturally occurring alkaloid used in the treatment of glaucoma, was an achievement of great technical difficulty and priority. His subsequent development of industrial methods for synthesising steroids from plant sources — using soybeans as the starting material — made possible the mass production of progesterone, testosterone, and cortisone. Before Julian's work, cortisone cost several hundred dollars a gram, far beyond most patients' reach. After his work, the price fell dramatically and the drug became available to people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and a wide range of other inflammatory conditions. Second, his career is a specific test case for what segregation cost American science. He was refused teaching positions and research posts at major universities because he was Black. He was denied the chance to complete a doctorate at Harvard for the same reason. The industrial chemistry career he pursued was a second-best path that he came to excel in, but the first-best path — a university chair at which he could have trained generations of students — was closed. The loss is not only personal. It is also a loss to American science of the students he would have trained and the research directions he would have explored. Third, his example of perseverance under specific and substantial hostility has been important to generations of later African American scientists, who have known they had a predecessor who did first-rank work under conditions more hostile than their own.

Key Ideas

Synthesis: making complex molecules from simpler ones

One of the central activities of organic chemistry is synthesis — building complex molecules in the laboratory from simpler starting materials. If a molecule has been identified as medically useful but is available only in tiny amounts from a rare natural source, a way to synthesise it from cheap materials transforms its availability. Percy Julian specialised in this kind of work. He developed synthetic routes to complex natural products that had previously been difficult or impossible to produce in useful quantities. The importance of his work lies not in discovering what the molecules were, but in finding reliable, scalable chemical paths to them from materials that were abundant and inexpensive.

From soybean to medicine: synthesising steroids

Steroid hormones like cortisone, progesterone, and testosterone are produced by the body in tiny amounts. Before the 1940s, medical preparations of these hormones could only be made from animal sources — most commonly the adrenal glands of cattle — in processes that were slow, expensive, and produced small quantities. Julian developed methods to synthesise these hormones starting from sterols extracted from soybean oil, a cheap and plentiful agricultural product. His routes made industrial-scale production possible. Cortisone, which in the 1940s had cost hundreds of dollars a gram, fell in price dramatically in the following decades, largely because of methods Julian's work had enabled.

The synthesis of physostigmine

Physostigmine is a compound produced by the Calabar bean, used traditionally in West African cultures and medically in the treatment of glaucoma. Its chemical structure was known but no one had succeeded in synthesising it in the laboratory. Julian and his assistant Josef Pikl completed the synthesis in 1935, beating an English group led by Robert Robinson who were working on the same problem. The achievement established Julian's international reputation as an organic chemist. It also provided a test of structural assignments for the molecule: by producing it from simpler compounds along a defined chemical path, Julian confirmed that the proposed structure was correct. This is a common use of synthesis in chemistry — as a rigorous test of proposed structures.

Key Quotations

"You can do anything you want if you will put enough work into it. That has always been my philosophy."

— Interview, 1970s

Julian is describing the attitude that carried him through fifty years of professional life under conditions designed to prevent him from succeeding. The remark has the shape of a standard motivational saying, but it is worth pausing over the specific career it describes. Anything he wanted, in his case, meant working as a chemist in a society that had refused him education, housing, and professional respect. The work he put in included not only the laboratory work itself but also the steady navigation of racial obstacles that were not his students' problems. The saying may sound generic; the life behind it was not.

"I have had one goal in my life, that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me."

— Speech at DePauw University, 1960s

Julian is reflecting on what his career was for. He did not describe his work mainly as the pursuit of scientific truth or personal achievement. He described it as trying to make things a little easier for those who came after. For Black scientists who followed him, this was not an abstract hope; his successes in synthesising medicines, in running laboratories, in being elected to the National Academy, made certain paths more plausible for later entrants. The remark is unsentimental. He does not claim to have made things easy — only a little easier. The precision of the claim matches the actual shape of gradual social change.

Using This Thinker in the Classroom

Scientific Thinking When introducing organic synthesis and its practical importance

How to introduce

Ask students: if a rare plant produces a medicine that cures a disease, what problem does this create? Most will see quickly that a rare source cannot supply many patients. Introduce the idea of synthesis: chemists find a way to build the same molecule from cheap, plentiful materials. Discuss Percy Julian's synthesis of steroid hormones from soybeans. Before his work, cortisone cost hundreds of dollars a gram; after, the price fell dramatically. Ask: how did a change in chemistry translate into a change in who could receive treatment? Connect to broader questions about how scientific techniques affect the availability and price of medicines.

Ethical Thinking When examining barriers to scientific careers

How to introduce

Tell students that Julian was refused admission to several major American universities for graduate study, was denied a doctorate at Harvard, and could not get a research faculty position at a major American university — all because he was Black. He eventually earned his doctorate in Vienna and made his career in industrial chemistry. Ask: how much scientific work was lost to American society through these barriers? How many Percy Julians were not known because they did not have his persistence or his specific opportunities? Connect to Mary Anning's class-based exclusions, to Rosalind Franklin's gender-based ones, and to the broader question of how many contributions have been lost to specific exclusions.

For a short introduction

The PBS NOVA documentary Forgotten Genius (2007) is an accessible starting point and is available online.

For a brief written introduction

The entry on Julian in the Science History Institute's online encyclopedia is reliable and includes photographs and references. The DePauw University archives maintain material on Julian as their most distinguished alumnus.

Key Ideas

Industrial chemistry and public access to medicine

Julian's career was not primarily academic. Most of his major contributions were made while working at Glidden, a paint manufacturer that had established a soybean research division, and later at his own company Julian Laboratories. Industrial chemistry operates under different constraints from academic chemistry: processes must be reliable at large scale, materials must be inexpensive, waste must be manageable, products must meet quality standards. Julian was extraordinarily good at working within these constraints. The result was that the medicines his syntheses made possible reached far more patients than they would have done if the underlying chemistry had remained a laboratory curiosity. This dimension of his career — the translation of laboratory chemistry into public medicine — deserves more recognition than it often gets.

Stigmasterol and the foam tank

One of Julian's industrial breakthroughs came from an accident. A tank of soybean oil at the Glidden plant was contaminated with water, producing a thick foam. Most chemists would have treated this as a problem. Julian recognised, from the appearance and behaviour of the foam, that stigmasterol — a valuable starting material for steroid synthesis — was being concentrated there. He developed methods to extract stigmasterol from what had been considered waste material. The story is a good example of how industrial chemistry often depends on the ability to recognise opportunities in anomalous observations. It also illustrates that scientific knowledge and practical production skill together produce results that neither alone can produce.

Access denied: segregation in American science

Julian's career was shaped throughout by the specific restrictions American segregation imposed on Black scientists. He could not attend graduate school at the American universities he was best qualified for. Harvard gave him a master's but refused to let him complete a doctorate or teach. No major American university would hire him as a research faculty member at the start of his career. His eventual academic appointments were at historically Black colleges with limited research resources. His industrial career was made possible partly because Glidden's management was willing to hire him when universities would not. Every achievement he made was made in spite of a structural system designed to prevent people like him from making achievements. This context is not a backdrop to his science; it is part of the story of his science.

Key Quotations

"Our ancestors were never hewers of wood and drawers of water only. They had a very important part in the development of civilization."

— Address to a Black student group, 1950s

Julian is pushing back against the historical narratives that reduce Black people to menial labour in the story of civilisation. The biblical phrase hewers of wood and drawers of water had long been used to describe the lowest kinds of service work. Julian is rejecting its application to African history and to the history of African Americans. He is not asserting an alternative history he has invented; he is pointing to the actual contributions of African civilisations to mathematics, medicine, metallurgy, and many other fields that standard narratives often omit. The remark anticipates later work in African and African American studies that would document these contributions in detail.

"I have seen so much evidence of the influence of heritage that I am convinced that what we call a race is an accident."

— Interview, 1960s

Julian is making a scientific argument against racism. His lifelong work in biochemistry had given him detailed understanding of how biological inheritance works. That understanding did not support the idea that races were natural biological categories with essential differences. The visible differences between human populations that get called race are, in his assessment, historical accidents of how human beings moved and mixed over time. The remark is a scientist's version of an argument that was being made in many forms in mid-twentieth-century America, and it carries weight because it came from someone who actually knew the relevant biology in detail.

Using This Thinker in the Classroom

Research Skills When examining industrial versus academic scientific work

How to introduce

Introduce the fact that most of Julian's major contributions were made in industry, not at a university. Discuss the different conditions of industrial and academic chemistry. Industrial chemistry works under commercial constraints — materials must be cheap, processes must scale, results must be reliable — but offers specific kinds of impact that purely academic work does not. Ask: what is gained and lost in each setting? Is one more valuable than the other? Connect to the broader question of how scientific knowledge moves from laboratories into products, and how the quality of that translation depends on specific institutional structures.

Cultural Heritage and Identity When examining the relationship between identity and professional work

How to introduce

Read Julian's remark that as long as I am a chemist only, I am not doing all I should. Ask students: what is he describing? Discuss the extra responsibilities he felt his position gave him — to speak, mentor, advocate, and represent — beyond the standard work of his profession. Ask: is this fair? Is it a burden, an opportunity, or both? Consider contemporary analogues: the expectation that members of underrepresented groups in any field also serve as examples and advocates for others from their groups. What are the costs and rewards of this additional expectation?

Critical Thinking When examining the relationship between scientific knowledge and racism

How to introduce

Read Julian's remark that what we call race is an accident. Introduce the idea that by the mid-twentieth century, biological scientists increasingly recognised that the concept of race did not map onto any clear biological reality — that the observable variation in human populations does not fall into a small number of discrete groups with essential differences. Ask students: what does this mean? Consider how scientific understanding has sometimes been used to support racism and sometimes to undermine it. Discuss the specific weight of a scientific argument against racial hierarchy coming from a Black scientist who knew the biology in detail. Connect to broader questions about how science and prejudice interact.

Further Reading

James Anderson Shreeve's Nature's Medicine (2001) and Bernhard Witkop's biographical memoir for the National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs series provide more detailed scientific treatments. For the wider context of Black chemists in twentieth-century America: Wini Warren's Black Women Scientists in the United States (1999) and Kenneth Manning's Black Apollo of Science (1983) on Ernest Everett Just provide companion studies.

Key Ideas

The Oak Park attacks

In 1950 Julian bought a house in Oak Park, Illinois, a white Chicago suburb. On Thanksgiving Day 1950, before his family had moved in, the house was set on fire. A year later, dynamite was thrown at the house while his family slept. Julian organised his own armed defence with neighbours until local authorities finally took the threats seriously. The Oak Park attacks occurred while Julian was already internationally recognised as a chemist and were part of a broader pattern of violence directed at Black families moving into white neighbourhoods across the North in the 1940s and 1950s. The specific experience of a Nobel-level scientist being targeted by firebombs in peacetime America is sometimes forgotten in more optimistic accounts of twentieth-century American science.

Total synthesis as a rigorous test

A total synthesis is the building of a complex organic molecule from simple, commercially available starting materials through a defined sequence of chemical steps. Completing a total synthesis of a natural product does several things at once: it tests whether the proposed structure is correct, it opens the possibility of producing the compound without relying on natural sources, and it typically reveals new chemistry that can be applied to other problems. Julian's synthesis of physostigmine and his syntheses of various steroids are examples of this kind of work at a very high level. The methodology is still central to organic chemistry today; most modern drug development relies on synthesis in some form, and the intellectual framework was established by a generation that included Julian.

Retrospective recognition: later honours

Julian was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, the second African American to receive the honour. He held nineteen honorary doctorates by the end of his life. He was inducted posthumously into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. A chemistry building at DePauw University, where he had been an undergraduate, was named after him. A United States postage stamp was issued in his honour in 1993. This pattern — significant recognition arriving late, often long after the major work was done — is common for figures whose contributions were made outside the usual prestige paths. Understanding it requires holding two truths together. The recognition that came eventually was real and deserved. The fact that it took so long reflects the specific obstacles of the career in which the work was done.

Key Quotations

"I have worked hard at being a chemist, but as long as I am a chemist only, I am not doing all I should."

— Speech, late career

Julian is describing the extra dimension of responsibility he felt his position gave him. Being a chemist was his primary work and took most of his time. But because of who he was and how far he had come, he also had to speak publicly, mentor younger Black scientists, campaign against segregation, and handle the specific threats his presence in a white suburb produced. None of this was required of his white colleagues. Julian did not resent the additional work, but he named it clearly. The remark illuminates something that members of marginalised groups in any field often recognise: the expectation that they do both the standard professional work and the additional work of representation, advocacy, and explanation.

"The American negro has been trained for slavery, not for manhood. He has been taught dependence, not independence."

— Address to Black students, 1950s

Julian is making a specific analytical point about American education. The system that educated Black Americans in his era was, he argues, still carrying the assumptions of slavery — training people for subordinate roles rather than for the independent exercise of their capacities. He is not denying that Black Americans had capacities; he was one himself and knew many others. He is pointing to the deliberate design of the institutions that had shaped generations. The argument connects to later work by other Black thinkers on the politics of American education — from Du Bois on schooling to bell hooks on teaching as a practice of freedom. Julian was making the argument from the inside of a scientific career shaped by exactly these conditions.

Using This Thinker in the Classroom

Ethical Thinking When examining how scientific reputation is built and recognised

How to introduce

Present the pattern of recognition in Julian's career: significant honours coming late, often after the major work was done, with full election to the National Academy of Sciences not until 1973, two years before his death. Ask: why does recognition often come late, especially for figures whose careers were made outside the usual prestige paths? Discuss the workings of scientific honours: who decides, on what criteria, with what biases. Consider other cases of late recognition: Mendeleev missing the Nobel, Anning's modern reassessment, Mendel's belated discovery. What does it take to correct the historical record, and how complete can the correction be?

Cultural Heritage and Identity When examining violence as a response to integration

How to introduce

Tell students about the Oak Park attacks of 1950 and 1951: an internationally recognised chemist's home was set on fire and later bombed when his family moved into a white suburb. Discuss this as a specific example of the violence that attended integration efforts across the American North in the mid-twentieth century. Ask: what does this story tell us about the period? Why is it less often included in standard narratives of American racial history, which often focus on the South? Connect to the broader pattern of violent resistance to Black families moving into white neighbourhoods. Discuss what it means for scientific work to continue under these conditions.

Common Misconceptions

Common misconception

Percy Julian invented cortisone.

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What to teach instead

Julian did not invent cortisone, and cortisone was not originally discovered through his work. Cortisone was isolated from the adrenal glands of cattle in the 1930s and 1940s by several research groups, and its structure was determined by Edward Kendall, Tadeusz Reichstein, and Philip Hench, who shared the 1950 Nobel Prize for this work. Julian's contribution was the development of synthetic methods that made cortisone and related steroids producible in large quantities from plant sources. This was a different achievement, and a substantial one — without Julian's work, cortisone would have remained a rare and expensive drug — but it was not the original discovery. Accuracy about what he did matters for understanding his specific place in the history of the drug.

Common misconception

Percy Julian won the Nobel Prize.

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What to teach instead

Julian did not receive the Nobel Prize. He was nominated but did not win. He received many other honours over his career — nineteen honorary doctorates, election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, the induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and others — but the Nobel eluded him. The failure to win the Nobel does not diminish his scientific importance, but it is sometimes misremembered. The pattern of not winning the Nobel has been noted for other important chemists whose work was of comparable significance, including Dmitri Mendeleev.

Common misconception

Percy Julian's difficulties were primarily personal hardships he overcame through talent.

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What to teach instead

Framing Julian's career as a story of individual perseverance against personal adversity misses the structural nature of what he faced. He was not dealing with bad luck or personal enemies. He was working within a system of legal and social segregation that systematically excluded Black Americans from higher education, professional positions, and safe neighbourhoods. The fact that he succeeded despite this system does not prove that the system was surmountable for most who faced it; it proves that exceptional individuals could sometimes make it through despite costs that stopped many others. The difference matters for how we draw lessons from his example today.

Common misconception

Julian's work was mainly important as a symbol for African Americans.

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What to teach instead

Julian's symbolic importance for African American scientists is real and deserved, but it is a consequence of his scientific importance, not a substitute for it. His synthesis of physostigmine was technically outstanding. His industrial methods for steroid production made possible the mass availability of medicines that had previously been out of reach. His laboratory produced first-rank chemistry. Treating him as primarily a symbolic figure, without engaging with the specific content of his chemistry, does him a disservice and repeats a pattern of recognising Black scientists for their identity rather than for their work. Both dimensions of his importance deserve serious attention.

Intellectual Connections

Complements

Dorothy Hodgkin

Julian and Hodgkin were near contemporaries whose work on complex biological molecules advanced along complementary paths. Julian developed industrial syntheses that made complex molecules available in large quantities from cheap starting materials. Hodgkin developed crystallographic techniques that determined the structures of such molecules. Both worked on steroids: Julian made them, Hodgkin learned their three-dimensional shapes. Their contributions together — making the molecules and understanding their structures — produced much of the foundation on which mid-twentieth-century pharmacology was built. Reading them together shows how different kinds of chemical work combine to produce medical progress.

In Dialogue With

Paul Farmer

Farmer argued that medical breakthroughs should be brought to the world's poor, not reserved for wealthy patients in rich countries. Julian's career is an example of this principle in practice, even before Farmer articulated it as a moral claim. His industrial chemistry aimed explicitly at making expensive drugs affordable. Cortisone went from hundreds of dollars a gram to a fraction of that, partly through his work. The underlying conviction — that knowing how to make a medicine is not enough; it has to be made in ways that allow it to reach the people who need it — runs through both careers. Reading them together connects industrial chemistry to global health ethics.

In Dialogue With

W.E.B. Du Bois

Julian and Du Bois were both African American intellectuals of the early and mid-twentieth century who insisted that Black Americans could do first-rank work in any field given the chance. Du Bois was a sociologist and historian; Julian was a chemist. Both faced systematic obstacles and both built careers in spite of them. Both were committed to training the next generation of Black professionals. Both understood that individual excellence alone would not fix structural injustice, but that individual excellence was not nothing either. Reading them together shows the range of African American intellectual life in the twentieth century, which extended far beyond the narrow representation often found in textbooks.

Complements

Marie Curie

Julian and Curie both demonstrate what dedicated laboratory work can accomplish when pursued against serious external obstacles. Curie faced systemic exclusion of women from most of European science; Julian faced systemic exclusion of Black Americans from most of American science. Both produced first-rank chemistry under those conditions. Both translated their science into practical benefit — Curie through her wartime X-ray service, Julian through the industrial availability of steroid medicines. Reading them together shows how barriers have differed across different groups while producing a common pattern of delayed recognition and underacknowledged achievement.

In Dialogue With

Audre Lorde

Lorde's insistence that as long as I am a chemist only, I am not doing all I should would not have sounded alien to her. Her argument that marginalised people cannot separate their professional work from the specific political conditions that shape their lives matches Julian's own experience. He did not treat his mentorship of younger Black scientists, his public speaking, and his responses to the Oak Park attacks as distractions from his science; they were part of the life a Black scientist of his era had to live. Reading Julian through Lorde's framework clarifies what the supposed separation of scientific work from political context has always cost those for whom the separation was not available.

Anticipates

Wangari Maathai

Julian and Maathai, separated by a generation and working in very different fields, both show how scientific training can be turned toward practical benefit for communities that standard scientific careers have often overlooked. Julian's industrial chemistry made steroid medicines affordable. Maathai's work on forests and soils helped rural Kenyan communities restore their environmental conditions. Both operated outside the usual prestige path — Julian in industry rather than elite universities, Maathai in grassroots activism rather than academic research — and both achieved results of international importance. Reading them together shows how different scientific disciplines can be applied to serving communities rather than only to building careers.