- Person
- Carl Djerassi
- Lived
- 1923–2015
- Field
- Chemistry
- From
- Austrian-American
The story
Carl Djerassi arrived in the United States in December 1939 as a sixteen-year-old refugee from Nazi-occupied Vienna, with his mother and almost no money. He had spent the previous year in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he learned fluent English at the American College. After a year at Newark Junior College and a scholarship obtained by writing to Eleanor Roosevelt, he finished a chemistry degree at Kenyon College in Ohio, graduating summa cum laude, and took a job at the Swiss pharmaceutical company CIBA in New Jersey.
There, in 1942 and 1943, while still a teenager, he worked on the development of tripelennamine, sold as Pyribenzamine. It was one of the first antihistamines to reach the market, part of a new class of drugs that block the effects of histamine, the chemical behind many allergic symptoms such as sneezing, itching and hives. Tripelennamine came to be used to treat hay fever, rhinitis, hives and asthma, and was also combined with other ingredients in cough medicines. It was Djerassi's first patent. CIBA later merged with Geigy, and the company eventually became part of Novartis.
After a year at CIBA he went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he earned his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1945 with a thesis on converting the male hormone testosterone into the female hormone estradiol through a series of chemical reactions. It was the start of a lifetime working on hormones and medicines.
He returned to CIBA after his doctorate, hoping to work on steroids, but that research was reserved for the company's laboratories in Switzerland. Disappointed, in 1949 he moved to Syntex in Mexico City, where within two years his group made a cheaper synthesis of cortisone and norethindrone, the first highly active oral progestin and a key ingredient of the contraceptive pill.
Pyribenzamine has since been largely replaced by newer antihistamines, but it belonged to the first generation of drugs that gave allergy sufferers real relief. For Djerassi it was the first of many contributions to medicine, made before he was twenty-one.
Why it matters
Early antihistamines like Pyribenzamine gave millions of allergy sufferers their first effective relief from symptoms.
About Carl Djerassi
Refugee from Nazi Vienna whose Syntex team in Mexico City first made norethindrone, a key oral contraceptive; later a novelist and playwright.
More about Carl Djerassi
- Carl Djerassi made cortisone from a Mexican yamIn 1951 Carl Djerassi's team at Syntex in Mexico City synthesised cortisone from a compound in a wild yam, using a cheaper raw material and about half as many steps.
- Carl Djerassi helped build DENDRAL, a pioneering AIIn 1965 Carl Djerassi, Joshua Lederberg and Edward Feigenbaum devised DENDRAL at Stanford, one of the first uses of artificial intelligence in biomedical research.
- Carl Djerassi published more than 1,200 scientific papersCarl Djerassi pioneered the use of mass spectrometry and optical rotatory dispersion to decode the structures of steroids and alkaloids, publishing more than 1,200 papers.
- Carl Djerassi pioneered gentler insect controlIn 1968 Carl Djerassi founded Zoecon to control pests with modified insect hormones instead of broad poisons, work honoured with the US National Medal of Technology in 1991.
- Two chemists wrote the play Oxygen togetherIn 1999 Carl Djerassi and the Nobel chemist Roald Hoffmann co-wrote Oxygen, a play about the discovery of oxygen and about what it means to be a scientist.
- Carl Djerassi gave his Paul Klee collection to museumsCarl Djerassi assembled one of the most significant private collections of Paul Klee's art and arranged for it to go to the Albertina in Vienna and SFMOMA in San Francisco.
- Carl Djerassi turned his ranch into a haven for artistsAfter his daughter Pamela, an artist, died in 1978, Carl Djerassi turned his California cattle ranch into the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, a retreat for working artists.
- Carl Djerassi invented science-in-fictionStarting with Cantor's Dilemma in 1989, Carl Djerassi wrote novels in a genre he called science-in-fiction, showing readers how real scientists think, compete and behave.
- Carl Djerassi helped create the first oral contraceptiveIn 1951 Carl Djerassi, a refugee from Nazi Austria, co-invented norethisterone in Mexico City, the first highly active progestin that worked by mouth and a key ingredient of the Pill.
Sources
- Carl Djerassi Wikipedia
- Carl Djerassi Science History Institute
- Tripelennamine Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.