Percy Lavon Julian

Percy Lavon Julian was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills.

11 April 1899

Born on the same birth day (11 April): Aleksandr Averin (cyclist) • Aleksandër Stavre Drenova • Bob Harris (radio presenter) • Ethel Kennedy • George Canning • Guy Verhofstadt • Jake Fraser-McGurk • James Underwood (pathologist) • Jeremy Clarkson • Joel Grey • Josh Hancock • Joss Stone • Keiji Tamada • Kelli Garner • Lena Schöneborn • Malcolm Christie • Mark Lawson • Mark Teixeira • Michael T. Wright (university administrator) • Oleg Cassini • Tommy Tycho

Born in the same month (April 1899): Alan Arnett McLeod • Aleksander Klumberg • Alfred Blalock • Alfred Mosher Butts • Duke Ellington • Hillel Oppenheimer • Mary Petty • Randall Thompson • Robert Casadesus