02/15/2019
Today we spotlight Percy Julian, an accomplished research chemist and one of the first African Americans to earn his doctorate in that subject. Born 11 April 1899 in Montgomery, Alabama, Julian grew familiar with the prejudice and discrimination of the Jim Crow South early in his childhood. He left Alabama to attend DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he surmounted the obstacles of segregation to become class valedictorian. He then enrolled at Harvard University with the hope of obtaining his PhD, but the university later withdrew his teaching assistantship, fearing that no white students would accept an African-American instructor. But upon receiving a fellowship to study at the University of Vienna, Julian’s educational aspirations broke free from some of the prejudices which had hampered him in the United States. He earned his PhD from that institution in 1931.
Back in the United States, Julian went on to have an extraordinary career as a private sector chemist, synthesizing a number of steroids and facilitating their industrial production on an unprecedented scale. After a brief stint at Howard University and a return to DePauw, Julian worked in the private sector at Glidden Company in Chicago. His success at Glidden prompted him to found his own company, Julian Laboratories, in 1953. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1973.
For more about Julian’s remarkable life, check out this article from the National Endowment of the Humanities, featured in anticipation of the premiere of the 2007 documentary, Forgotten Genius: https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2007/januaryfebruary/feature/percy-julian
