- Person
- Carl Djerassi
- Lived
- 1923–2015
- Field
- Chemistry
- From
- Austrian-American
The story
Alongside chemistry and literature, Carl Djerassi was a passionate art collector. Using wealth from his years at Syntex, the Mexico City company where he helped create the contraceptive pill, he built a large collection, and his holdings of works by the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee were considered one of the most significant held privately anywhere.
Rather than keep the works to himself or leave them to be sold, Djerassi shared them with the public. In 1984 he deposited his Klee holdings with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and he arranged for them to pass to the museum. The SFMOMA collection numbers nearly 90 works spanning Klee's entire career, from 1895 to 1940, and includes paintings, watercolours, gouaches, drawings, etchings and lithographs, from tightly controlled portraits to loosely painted abstractions. After the museum's expansion reopened in 2016, they were shown in the Djerassi Gallery and Paul Klee Study Center. SFMOMA's director, Neal Benezra, called the collection one of the world's great repositories of Klee's art.
Djerassi also gave a second large group of Klee works on paper, reported as about 150 pieces that had been on loan to SFMOMA for some twenty years, to the Albertina museum in Vienna. A catalogue, Paul Klee: Masterpieces of the Djerassi Collection, documented the works.
The choice of Vienna was striking. Djerassi had been born there in 1923 and was forced to flee as a teenager after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938; Austria had even refused him citizenship. He described the gift as an act of peace-making with the country of his birth. Late in life he was warmly reconciled with Vienna, receiving the city's Gold Medal in 2002, an Austrian postage stamp for his 80th birthday, a new Austrian passport and honorary doctorates from several Viennese universities. A square at the University of Vienna's biology building, Djerassiplatz, is named after him.
His gifts returned great art to the city that had driven him out, and placed a major body of modern art in public hands on two continents.
Why it matters
Djerassi's gift placed a major body of modern art in public hands, where it can be seen by museum visitors in Europe and America.
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 helped create an early antihistamineAs a 19-year-old chemist at CIBA in New Jersey in 1942–43, Carl Djerassi helped develop Pyribenzamine, one of the first commercial antihistamines and his first patent.
- 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 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
- Dr. Carl Djerassi Statement San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- News digest: Djerassi Klee gift to the Albertina Museums Association
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.