elegant and inspiring

As part of my celebration of Knowledge Week on Glaucoma (National Health Library), I give you Percy Lavon Julian. He was born on April 11 (my birthday, if not my actual day of birth), 1899, and died on my brother's birthday (again, not his actual...), April 19, 1975.

Percy Julian was a research chemist who found affordable ways to synthesise cortisone, vitamins and other things from soybeans - sort of like a George Washington Carver of medicine. He was awarded 150 patents in his lifetime, and one of them was undoubtedly for his work on the synthesis of physostigmine - aka my very own 'poison eye drops', Pilocarpine! He is honoured now not only as a scientist but also as a man who overcame amazing obstacles - born the grandson of a slave, in Alabama - to a life of real and lasting achievement.

I've seen several pictures of him and I can say he seems to have been pretty damn elegant pretty much of the time. Even in his lab coat, frankly.

The Negro scientist now need neither to starve nor be condemned to a frustrating intellectual ghetto if he chooses pure science as a career, and one can see a promising future for his fresh and uninhibited imaginative power.

- Percy Julian