Carl Djerassi

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Patent of the first orally active progestin which led to the development of the oral contraceptive, elected to the USA Inventors Hall of Fame
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Patent of the first orally active progestin which led to the development of the oral contraceptive, elected to the USA Inventors Hall of Fame

Carl Djerassi (born October 29, 1923 in Vienna, Austria), is a chemist and playwright best known for his contribution to the development of the oral contraceptive pill (OCP). He participated in the invention in 1951, together with Mexicans Luis E. Miramontes and Jorge Rosenkranz, of the progestin norethindrone which, unlike progesterone, remained effective when taken orally and was far stronger than the naturally occurring hormone. His preparation was first administered as an oral contraceptive to animals by Gregory Pincus and Min Chueh Chang and to women by John Rock. Djerassi remarked that he did not have birth control in mind when he began working with progesterone - "not in our wildest dreams... did we imagine (it)", though he is now referred to by some as the father of the pill. He is also the author of the novel Cantor's Dilemma, in which he explores the ethics of modern scientific research through his protagonist, Dr. Cantor.

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[edit] Life

Djerassi's mother was Austrian and his father was Bulgarian. They met in medical school at the University of Vienna, married and moved to Sofia, Bulgaria. His mother returned to Vienna for two months for the birth of her only child. Djerassi lived in Bulgaria with his parents until he was five. He and his mother then moved to Vienna where he attended a Realgymnasium until age fourteen, spending summers in Bulgaria with his father who had divorced his mother. Born in Vienna to a Jewish family, Djerassi fled to Bulgaria in 1939, in order to escape the Nazi regime. After the Anschluss, his father briefly remarried his mother to allow Djerassi to escape to Bulgaria in 1938 where he lived with his father for a year attending the American College of Sofia while his mother went to England to await a visa to emigrate to the United States. At age sixteen, Djerassi and his mother arrived nearly penniless (they had only $20) in the United States in 1939.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Kenyon College (B.A. in organic chemistry, 1942). He married his first wife, an American, in 1943 before beginning graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he earned his Ph.D. in 1945. He became an American citizen in 1945 and worked for Ciba the year before and four years after his graduate studies. In 1949, he was recruited to be the associate director of research at Syntex in Mexico City by then technical director George Rosenkranz, and worked there from 1950-1951. From 1952 to 1959, Djerassi taught chemistry at Wayne State University. He returned to Syntex from 1957 to 1960, while on a leave of absence from Wayne State University.[1][2]

Since 1959, Djerassi has been a professor of chemistry at Stanford University and the president of Syntex Laboratories in Mexico City, Mexico, and later in Palo Alto, California. With his first wife, Norma Lundholm, he had a daughter Pamela who grew up to become an artist. After Pamela's suicide in 1978, he founded the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in her memory. Djerassi is currently married to biographer and Stanford professor emerita Diane Middlebrook. They live in San Francisco and London.

[edit] Social impact of scientific work

The social impact of the pill was anticipated by Dr. Carl Djerassi. He perceived the pill as a huge impact on the social processes of women and men, which to a significant extent is influenced through the sociobiology of sexual reproduction. He anticipated a far more social impact on men than on women, in what he called as the feminization of men, implying the "Social-feminization" of laws and social values in favour of women in society as a whole.

[edit] Awards and honors

In 1978, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1991 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology for "his broad technological contributions to solving environmental problems; and for his initiatives in developing novel, practical approaches to insect control products that are biodegradable and harmless."

Prof. Djerassi is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists[3] and is chairman of the Pharmanex Scientific Advisory Board[4].

[edit] Books

[edit] Non-fiction

  • Optical Rotatory Dispersion, McGraw-Hill & Company, 1960.
  • The Politics of Contraception, W H Freeman & Company, 1981, ISBN 0-7167-1342-X
  • Steroids Made it Possible (Profiles, Pathways, and Dreams), American Chemical Society, 1990, ISBN 0-8412-1773-4 (autobiography)
  • The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse, Basic Books, 1992, ISBN 0-465-05758-6 (autobiography)
  • From the Lab into The World: A Pill for People, Pets, and Bugs, American Chemical Society, 1994, ISBN 0-8412-2808-6
  • Paul Klee: Masterpieces of the Djerassi Collection, (coeditor), Prestel Publishing, 2002, ISBN 3-7913-2779-8
  • This Man's Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill , Oxford University Press, USA, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860695-8 (memoir)

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Science-in-fiction

[edit] Drama

  • An Immaculate Misconception: Sex in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Imperial College Press, 2000, ISBN 1-86094-248-2 (adapted from the novel, Menachem's Seed)
  • Oxygen, Wiley-VCH, {with Roald Hoffmann, coauthor), 2001, ISBN 3-527-30413-4
  • Newton's Darkness: Two Dramatic Views, (with David Pinner, coauthor), Imperial College Press, 2004, ISBN 1-86094-390-X

[edit] External links

[edit] Bibliography

  • Marks, Lara V (2004). Sexual Chemistry: A History Of The Contraceptive Pill. Diane Publishing Company. ISBN 0-300-08943-0.
  • Tone, Andrea (2001). Devices and Desires. New York: Hill and Wang, A Division of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ISBN 0-8090-3817-X.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Djerassi, Carl (May 1, 1990). Steroids Made It Possible. An American Chemical Society Publication, 205. ISBN 0-8412-1773-4.
  2. ^ Djerassi, Carl (April 1992). The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse. Basic Books, 336. ISBN 0-465-05759-4.
  3. ^ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Retrieved on 2006-10-23.
  4. ^ http://www.pharmanex.com/corp/pharmanews/sab/carl_djerassi.shtml
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