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): Abdullah Atalar • Aleksandër Stavre Drenova • Charles Hallé • Dele Alli • Dimitrios Anastasopoulos • Doug Hopkins • Frank Mantooth • James Underwood (pathologist) • John Cryer • John Levy (musician) • Josh Server • Kelli Garner • Malcolm Christie • Manuel Ugarte (footballer) • Michael Deaver • Percy Lane Oliver • Pierre Lacroix (ice hockey, born 1959) • Robert Stanfield • Stuart Adamson

Born in the same month (April 1899): Aleksander Klumberg • Alfred Blalock • Duke Ellington • George O'Brien (actor) • Gustavs Celmiņš • Hillel Oppenheimer • Mary Petty • Oscar Rabin • Osman Achmatowicz • Robert Casadesus • Vladimir Nabokov • Walter Lantz