Surmounting the insurmountable

“It all began with a simple little bean,” Percy Julian wrote of the Calabar bean. “It was a beautiful, purple bean when I first got it. But it is not only beautiful in its appearance, but also in the laboratory it has within it.”

Julian was hungry for the deepest secrets of plant chemistry. His curiosity led him to pioneer the creation of drugs and other chemicals from substances previously found only in plants. His synthesis of physostigmine, found in the Calabar bean, or Physostigmavenenosum, yielded a treatment for glaucoma. From the soybean, he wrested a fire retardant used to douse gasoline fires on aircraft carriers during World War II; the soybean also became the foundation for hydrocortisone treatments for arthritis and for hormonal treatments. In his lifetime, Julian registered more than 130 chemical patents.

Alabama’s educational system was segregated, and public school for blacks ended after eighth grade. Julian continued his education at a two-year teacher training school for black students before entering DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1916.

Getting into the university was just the start. Although DePauw had been educating black students since the Civil War, they were still segregated from many parts of university life. Unlike his white classmates, Julian received no dorm assignment. Instead, he was given a room away from campus with few furnishings and a slop jar for a toilet. His landlady told him she didn’t have to provide him with meals. Eventually, Julian found a place on campus. In exchange for a room, he waited tables and fired up the furnace in a fraternity house.

Julian attracted the notice of chemistry professor William Blanchard, whose enthusiasm allowed Julian to envision for himself a future in research, although only one African American had ever earned a doctoral degree in chemistry. Julian graduated from DePauw in 1920 at the top of his class. When he applied to Harvard University’s PhD program, the leading chemists there said that there was no point. Nobody would hire a black researcher. “Why don’t you find him a teaching job in a Negro college in the South?” they suggested to Blanchard. “He doesn’t need a PhD for that.”

Julian took the advice, and went to teach at Fiske University in Nashville. He eventually got to Harvard and received his master’s degree there, only to be thwarted again when he aimed for a doctorate that would allow him to pursue research.

He taught chemistry at several universities before getting Rockefeller Foundation support to pursue his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1929.

In Vienna he studied alkaloids, plant chemicals that contain nitrogen. “Alkaloids were an untapped chemical class,” says Petsko, “and nature was full of them.” Chemists looked to natural compounds for potent medicines. Caffeine, morphine, strychnine—chemicals we now consider drugs—are plant alkaloids.

Julian’s breakthrough came in 1935 with his synthesis of physostigmine, which chemists previously found in the Calabar bean. A poisonous legume native to tropical Africa, the bean’s unusual properties had fascinated scientists since the 1800s. Physicians knew the drug helped to treat glaucoma, but they didn’t know how to get the large quantities they needed.

In choosing to synthesize physostigmine, Julian was challenging one of the foremost chemists of the day. Sir Robert Robinson had published widely on physostigmine and was working to synthesize the substance himself. Undaunted, Julian set out to get there first. With Pikl, he devised a different approach to creating the alkaloid. The two published articles on their progress, but the ultimate goal remained elusive.

As they were rushing to finish, Robinson published a complete synthesis. “The shock was almost unbearable,” Julian wrote of his reaction. “We were not the first, just the ‘me toos.’ Why did he, of so much fame, who didn’t at all need the glory, have to snatch the prize from us?”

Then Julian noticed a mistake in Robinson’s method. In their next paper, Julian and Pikl pointed out Robinson’s error and described their own synthesis. Julian knew that if he were wrong, his career would be finished.

In the end, Julian’s analysis held up and his own synthesis of physostigmine was confirmed. In 1999, the American Chemical Society named his work on physostigmine a National Historic Chemical Landmark, calling it “the first of Julian’s lifetime of achievements in the chemical synthesis of commercially important natural products.”

Julian’s triumph with physostigmine made him a major figure in chemistry research. But even with that great discovery, his career was not secure. He was soon forced to leave DePauw after local critics challenged the school for hiring him. He sought other positions but no one would employ him because of his color.

“Day by day, as I entered these firms, presented my credentials and asked for a job, the answer seemed like it had been transmitted by wire from one firm to another,” he recounted later. Every company he approached said it had never hired a black research chemist before and didn’t know how to do it now.

“I feel that my own good country robbed me of the chance for some of the great experiences that I would have liked to live through,” said Julian. “Instead, I took a job where I could get one and tried to make the best of it. I have been, perhaps, a good chemist, but not the chemist that I dreamed of being.”

“His story is a story of great accomplishment, of heroic efforts and overcoming tremendous odds,” says University of Illinois historian James Anderson in the film. “It’s a story about who we are and what we stand for, and the challenges that have been there, and the challenges that are still with us.”

Petsko echoes this sentiment. “How many other Julians are there who aren’t doing what he did, simply because they don’t have the opportunity? It makes me wonder if we’re trying to solve 100 percent of the world’s problems with less than 100 percent of the world’s brainpower.”