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Carl Djerassi: The Steroid King
| Article
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20296 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1992 |
3,160 Words |
| Author
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George B. and Laurie M. Kauffman
George B. Kauffman is professor of chemistry at California
State University at Fresno and a former Guggenheim Fellow. He
is the author of fifteen books and more than eleven hundred
publications on chemistry, chemical education, and the
history of science and technology. Laurie M. Kauffman is a
retired teacher with an interest in the humanistic aspects of
science. |
In the recent, critically acclaimed cable television series, The Class of the 20th Century, consisting of the views of "one hundred Americans who'd joined together to place in a time capsule for the people of the year 3000 . . . our most important memories . . . [of] how we felt about our century," actor and program host Richard Dreyfuss stated, "There years after Sputnik we had another first--a new kind of contraception--the Pill. In one tiny pill lay the foundation for a new way of life . . . Today you can divide our world into pre-pill and post-pill. This may not sound momentous to you in the year 3000, but it was enough to start a revolution for us." C. Everett Koop, surgeon general of the United States from 1981 to 1989, concurs, stating that the pill "was the turning point when society began to talk about reproductive physiology in this country, and out of that came a whole awakening of how far behind we were, and still are, in understanding an awful lot of things that people should be raised knowing--such as contraception."
The man largely responsible for this profound and revolutionary development is a trim, five-foot-seven, handsome, distinguished-looking man with a meticulously groomed white beard and mustache, a wavy, leonine shock of white hair, and somewhat melancholy, dark eyes that bespeak a familiarity with suffering and a deep desire to be understood. Standford Prof. Carl Djerassi's mellifluous voice and slight accent, which he characterizes as "German-Slavic," betray the fact that he first learned English at the American College in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Djerassi's name is virtually synonymous with the first and most widely used oral contraceptive agent, norethindrone, which he synthesized. His contributions to science, however, are more far-reaching. He has been actively involved in the fields of steroids, antihistamines, anti-inflammatory agents, alkaloids, terpenoids, antibiotics, sponge sterols, and physicochemical techniques. In recent years, he has also become a true Renaissance man by joining the meager ranks of scientists who have contributed to literature.
Early Childhood
Born in Vienna on October 29, 1923, to Samuel Djerassi, a Bulgarian physician who specialized in venereal diseases, and Alice Friedmann Djerassi, an Austrian dentist, Carl Djerassi grew up in Vienna, where, until age 14, he attended the Realgymnasium (high school) that had been attended by Sigmund Freud,. His parents were both Jewish, but although young Carl was bar mitzvahed, the family was not religiously observant. He characterizes
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