Did you notice last Friday’s Google doodle? It was an homage to Percy Lavon Julian, a pioneer in the art and science of isolating powerful medicines from natural sources. He would have been 115 years old last week.
[H]e and other black students were not permitted to live in the dormitories and finding off-campus housing was difficult.
In 1923, he earned a fellowship to conduct graduate work in chemistry at Harvard, but was only permitted to earn a master’s degree. The administration withdrew his teaching assistantship, arguing that Harvard students from the South would not tolerate being taught by a Negro, no matter how accomplished.
Despite the constant hardships, Julian did go on to earn a doctorate in Europe. His work with soybeans and the calabar bean would lead to new treatments for glaucoma and rheumatoid arthritis. And his studies of steroids — again, starting with soybeans — would help bring about birth control pills and drugs to keep the immune system in check in organ transplant patients.