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): AD 145 • Aleksandr Averin (cyclist) • Bernard O'Dowd • Bill Irwin • Charles Evans Hughes • David Jassy • David Westheimer • Harley Race • Jeremy Clarkson • K. L. Saigal • Lisa Stansfield • Luis Flores (basketball) • Mark Teixeira • Marta Breen • Masaru Ibuka • Michel Riesen • Pablo Hernández (footballer, born 1985) • Pierre Lacroix (ice hockey, born 1959) • Richard Berry (musician) • Sergei Lukyanenko • Thulani Serero • William of Winchester, Lord of Lunenburg • Àlex Corretja

Born in the same month (April 1899): Aleksander Klumberg • Alfred Mosher Butts • Cemal Tollu • Duke Ellington • George O'Brien (actor) • Gustavs Celmiņš • Hillel Oppenheimer • Mary Petty • Minoru Shirota • Oscar Rabin • Osman Achmatowicz • Vladimir Nabokov