April 11, 1899

Synthetic organic chemist Percy Lavon Julian was born in Montgomery. Julian attended segregated public schools in Alabama for eight years, the maximum allowed to black students, and two years at the Lincoln Normal School in Marion. After earning degrees from Depauw University and Harvard University, he graduated from the University of Vienna to become only the third African American in the world to earn a PhD in chemistry. Julian’s research in the field of natural products chemistry resulted in more than 160 publications and 100 patents and he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Percy Julian at work as a research associate at the Minshall Laboratory at DePauw University in the 1930s. Julian’s work in the lab involved the calabar bean and physostigmine; his later lab work resulted in advances in the production of steroids, sex hormones, and cortisone, among other things. (Courtesy of The Birmingham News, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

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