Percy Lavon Julian

Both his parents had been through what became Alabama State, his father clerked in the railway mail service, and they pushed all six children past the eighth grade at a time when Black Alabamians rarely got that far. DePauw admitted him and would not let him live in a dormitory. The first boarding house he found refused to serve him meals, and it took days to locate anywhere in Greencastle that would feed him. He ended up firing the furnace and waiting tables at a fraternity for a bed in the attic and a seat at the table. He graduated in 1920 as valedictorian and Phi Beta Kappa. By 1930 his father had moved the whole family to Greencastle so the rest of the children could follow him through.

Fisk hired him to teach. An Austin Fellowship carried him to Harvard for a master's in 1923, and Harvard then withdrew his teaching assistantship on the theory that white students would resent being taught by him, which closed off the doctorate. He took it at Vienna instead, in 1931, under Ernst Späth. Back at DePauw in 1935 with Josef Pikl, he completed the first total synthesis of physostigmine — he had noticed that the melting point in Robert Robinson's published route was wrong, meaning Robinson had never made the compound. At Glidden from 1936 he built the world's first plant for isolated soy protein, turned soybean sterols into progesterone and testosterone at industrial scale, and in 1949 announced a cheaper route to cortisone's precursor. He held more than 130 patents.

He had run chemistry at Howard for three years when a colleague he had crossed handed the Baltimore Afro-American a stack of letters Julian had written him from Vienna. They ran all summer in 1932: wine, Viennese women, music, and Julian's own account of how he had maneuvered the university president into approving his chemistry building and bluffed a friend into appointing a professor he wanted. He resigned. DePauw then declined to make him a professor for reasons it did not disguise, and DuPont hired his Vienna collaborator while apologizing to Julian that it had been unaware he was Black. When he moved his family to Oak Park around 1950 as its first Black residents, the house was firebombed on Thanksgiving Day before they had moved in and dynamited on June 12, 1951 after they had.

He sold Julian Laboratories in 1961 for 2.3 million dollars, became one of the first Black millionaires in the country, and spent the rest of his life running a research institute of his own. The National Academy of Sciences elected him in 1973 — the first Black chemist it had taken, and after the mathematician David Blackwell only the second Black scientist from any field. He died of liver cancer at Waukegan on April 19, 1975, a week past his 76th birthday. DePauw put his name on its science building in 1980, Oak Park put it on a middle school in 1985, the Postal Service put him on a stamp in 1993, and PBS titled the 2007 documentary Forgotten Genius.

Percy Lavon Julian's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Total synthesis of physostigmine discovery
  With Josef Pikl at DePauw, and it disproved Robert Robinson's published claim 1935
• The first industrial isolated soy protein plant invention
  Built at Glidden — its protein went into the Navy's firefighting foam 1936
• Large-scale progesterone and testosterone from soybean sterols discovery
  The chemistry underneath the modern steroid drug industry 1940
• Synthesis of cortexolone, the precursor of cortisone discovery
  Announced on September 30, 1949, and it took osmium tetroxide out of the route 1949
• Julian Laboratories company
  Founded December 1, 1953 in a concrete-block building and sold in 1961 for 2.3 million dollars 1953
• Julian Research Institute company
  He managed it for the rest of his life 1964

• 1920 aged ~21 Graduates from DePauw as valedictorian after sleeping in a fraternity attic He had been refused a dormitory bed and, at first, meals.
• 1923 aged ~24 Takes a master's at Harvard, which then withdraws his teaching assistantship The stated worry was that white students would resent being taught by an African American.
• 1931 aged ~32 Earns his doctorate at the University of Vienna under Ernst Späth
• 1932 aged ~33 Resigns from Howard after his private letters run all summer in the press
• 1935 aged ~36 Completes the first total synthesis of physostigmine
• 1936 aged ~37 Joins Glidden as director of research in its soya products division
• 1947 aged ~48 The NAACP awards him the Spingarn Medal Cited for the soy protein behind the Navy's firefighting foam.
• June 12, 1951 aged 52 His Oak Park house is dynamited, seven months after being firebombed A neighborhood committee formed to support the family afterward.
• July 1956 aged 57 Testifies to a Senate subcommittee that Syntex is monopolizing the Mexican yam The hearings ended in a consent decree with the Justice Department.

• George Washington Carver 1864–1943
  Agricultural scientist whose research on crop rotation and alternative crops transformed Southern farming. earlier in the line
• Benjamin Banneker 1731–1806
  Free Black astronomer and almanac author who helped survey the federal district and challenged Jefferson on race. earlier in the line
• Margaret Sanger 1879–1966
  Birth-control advocate who transformed reproductive health access while leaving a deeply contested legacy involving eugenics. his steroid chemistry made her cause practical
• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. argued the case his career tested
• Mae Jemison b. 1956
  First African American woman in space, physician, and advocate for science education and global health. later through the same doors