11/30/2025
At 23, she cured leprosy. At 24, she was gone.
And for 90 years, a white man took credit for her work.
This is the story of Alice Augusta Ball — the genius they tried to erase.
She grew up in Seattle in the early 1900s, in a family that believed Black brilliance was worth investing in.
Her grandfather was one of the first Black photographers in America.
Her mother scrubbed floors so she could buy Alice a microscope.
That gift changed the world.
Alice devoured chemistry like it was oxygen.
She earned two bachelor’s degrees.
Published research while still a student.
Then moved to Hawai‘i — and became:
✨ The first woman to earn a master’s in chemistry at UH
✨ The first Black woman to graduate with that degree
✨ The first woman chemistry professor in the school’s history
She was 23 years old.
But while she was teaching, she saw something far more urgent than academia:
Hansen’s disease — leprosy.
A diagnosis meant exile.
You were ripped from your home and shipped to an island to die alone.
There was a treatment —
a bitter, sticky oil that barely worked and caused excruciating pain.
Many refused it. Many still died.
Alice refused to give up.
In her laboratory, she found the answer no one else could:
She transformed that thick oil into a form the body could actually absorb.
A breakthrough injection that finally saved lives.
Patients began recovering.
Families were reunited.
People who had been condemned were suddenly healing.
Her discovery became known as the Ball Method.
She changed medical history before most people finish college.
And then — she was gone.
At just 24, a mysterious lab accident took her life.
She never saw the miracle she created.
Then came the theft.
The university president — a white chemist named Arthur Dean — took her research, stripped off her name, and renamed it:
“The Dean Method.”
For decades…
📌 His name went in textbooks
📌 His name was praised by doctors
📌 His name received the credit
Her name nearly vanished from history entirely.
A theft so quiet, most people never even knew a crime was committed.
It took 90 years for the truth to finally surface.
Researchers uncovered Alice’s original papers.
Her work.
Her brilliance.
Her signature breakthroughs.
The spotlight shifted. The lie crumbled.
And today the world knows:
It was The Ball Method — ALWAYS.
Alice Ball cured a disease that had destroyed lives for centuries.
She freed families.
She saved thousands of people from isolation and death.
And she did it all in one year.
Imagine what she could’ve done with a lifetime.
Alice Ball deserved a Nobel Prize.
She deserved statues.
She deserved to be the name every science student memorizes.
Instead, she was buried under silence…
Until now.
We speak her name because history refused to.
We honor her because others didn’t.
We remember her because she earned it.
Alice Augusta Ball (1892–1916)
The chemist who changed the world before she had time to live in it.
