31/12/2025
I'm loving all these interesting stories of past people and their impact on science and health. I hadn't heard of Percy Jackson, however being on progesterone and cortisone for years in my teens and twenties, I'm very familiar with his discoveries...
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1B6CtRuGtb/
The call came in the middle of the night. A pipe had burst at the Glidden Company factory in Chicago. Water had contaminated a massive tank of soybean oil—weeks of work destroyed.
When Percy Julian arrived, workers were ready to drain the tank and scrap everything. A thick white sludge coated the bottom. The batch looked worthless.
Percy told them to stop.
He climbed up and peered at what everyone else saw as garbage. And in that foamy white substance, he saw something nobody else could see.
He saw the future of medicine.
The "waste" wasn't waste at all. It was stigmasterol—a crystalline plant steroid he'd been desperately trying to isolate for months. The accidental contamination had done what his laboratory couldn't. It had separated the exact molecular key he needed to change the world.
But to understand why this moment mattered, you need to understand the man seeing it—and the America that tried to destroy him.
Percy Lavon Julian was born in 1899 in Montgomery, Alabama. His grandparents had been enslaved. His parents raised six children in Jim Crow's heart, where every door seemed designed to close before a Black person could walk through.
When Percy tried to enter high school, Montgomery had no high school for Black students. The city had simply decided Black children didn't need education beyond eighth grade.
His family scraped together money for private school. He arrived years behind, placed in remedial classes. He caught up. Then he surged ahead.
He graduated valedictorian. At DePauw University in Indiana, he wasn't allowed in dormitories. He lived in a fraternity attic and worked as a waiter, serving dinner to white students who'd become doctors through family connections while he'd have to be twice as brilliant to get half as far.
He became twice as brilliant.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1920. University after university rejected his graduate applications. The message was clear: no matter how smart you are, you're Black, and we don't want you here.
Harvard accepted him for a master's degree in 1923, then refused to let him stay for his doctorate. They'd made an exception once. They weren't ready to give a Ph.D. to a Black man.
So Percy went to Vienna. In Austria, far from Jim Crow, he could be judged on his mind rather than his skin. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1931.
He returned to America with a doctorate from one of Europe's finest universities, fluent in German, armed with expertise few Americans could match.
The job offers didn't come.
In 1935, he synthesized physostigmine—a complex glaucoma medication that major pharmaceutical companies had failed to create. DuPont Chemical noticed. They offered him a job.
Then they learned he was Black. They rescinded the offer.
Finally, in 1936, the Glidden Company in Chicago hired him to work with soybeans. It wasn't glamorous. But Percy saw possibility in those humble beans.
Because while corporate America debated whether a Black man could run a research division, millions of people were suffering.
Arthritis patients lived in agony—joints swollen, movement torture. Cortisone could help, but it came from cattle glands. Extracting enough required processing thousands of pounds of organs. A single gram cost over $200—equivalent to thousands today. Only the wealthy could afford relief.
Women suffering hormonal disorders, couples unable to have children—they all needed progesterone. They all faced impossible costs.
Percy believed the answer wasn't in animals. It was in plants.
The chemistry was ferociously difficult. The process kept failing.
Then came the leak.
That contaminated tank everyone wanted to throw away had accidentally isolated stigmasterol in pure form. Percy took samples back to his lab and worked with furious intensity. He converted it into progesterone through chemical reactions nobody thought possible.
It worked.
He scaled up production. By 1949, his plant-based synthesis methods made cortisone mass production possible.
The price of relief crashed from buying a car to buying aspirin.
Women who couldn't afford treatment could now have children. People confined to wheelchairs walked again. Patients going blind could see.
Percy Julian had turned an industrial accident into a medical revolution.
He held over 130 patents. In 1953, he founded Julian Laboratories. He sold it in 1961 for millions, becoming one of the first Black millionaires in America through scientific genius alone.
But the world Percy healed did not heal him back.
In 1950, Percy moved his family to Oak Park, Illinois—a quiet Chicago suburb. He'd earned his place there. He'd revolutionized medicine. He'd proven himself a hundred times over.
His neighbors didn't care.
On June 12, 1950, someone threw a Molotov cocktail through his window. His wife and children were inside. The firebomb was meant to burn them out—or worse.
The family survived. On Thanksgiving weekend that year, attackers tried again. This time with dynamite.
Percy Julian had conquered molecular chemistry. He'd outsmarted diseases plaguing humanity for millennia. He'd built a fortune through brilliance.
Now he sat on his front porch with a shotgun across his knees, guarding his family from neighbors who couldn't stand a Black man living among them.
One of America's greatest scientists—a man who'd saved millions—was forced to defend his home with a weapon because genius couldn't overcome skin color in racist eyes.
Percy didn't run. He stayed in that house. He raised his children there. He refused to let terrorism dictate where he belonged.
He once said: "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."
He achieved that goal in ways most people will never know.
Every time a pharmacy fills a prescription for cortisone, prednisone, or synthetic hormones derived from plant steroids—someone is walking the path Percy cleared. Every person who takes affordable anti-inflammatory medication, uses birth control, or treats hormonal conditions without bankruptcy is living in the world Percy built.
And most have never heard his name.
That erasure isn't accidental. America has never been comfortable celebrating Black genius that exposes how much brilliance it tried to suppress.
Think about what we almost lost. If the firebombs had succeeded, if Percy had run instead of stayed, if he'd been broken by relentless racism—how many millions would have suffered longer?
Percy didn't just overcome obstacles. He transformed them into opportunities. Accidental contamination became revolutionary discovery. Rejection from white institutions became motivation to prove them wrong. Terrorism against his family became a demonstration that courage couldn't be burned out.
Percy Julian died on April 19, 1975, at age 76. His name never became household knowledge like Edison or Curie.
Perhaps because celebrating Percy Julian means confronting uncomfortable truths. It means admitting genius wore a Black face in Jim Crow America and we tried to suppress it. It means acknowledging that a man who saved millions was firebombed for buying a house.
But walk into any pharmacy. Look at the affordable medications on shelves. The cortisone cream. The birth control pills. The hormone treatments.
You're standing in the cathedral Percy Julian built.
He found miracles in molecules. He saw answers in accidents. He turned soybeans into salvation for millions.
And when neighbors tried to burn him out, he sat with a shotgun and refused to yield what he'd earned.
His former colleague said: "If Julian had been white, he probably would have been president of a major chemical company or head of a great university. Instead, he had to fight every day of his life for opportunities handed to others."
Today, every person who takes affordable medicine derived from his work owes their relief to a man most have never heard of.
Percy Julian spent his life making life easier for people who came after him—including people who despised him. He found the miracle in the mud, the cure in what others discarded.
He sat on his porch with a shotgun, defending his family, while medicines he'd created sat in pharmacies healing the children of people who'd tried to burn him out.
That's not just irony. That's grace.
The next time you reach for medicine that doesn't cost a fortune, remember: you're touching the legacy of a man who was firebombed for being Black, who defended what he'd earned with a shotgun, and who saved millions anyway.
His name was Percy Julian.
And it's time everyone knew it.
