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): Anatoly Berezovoy • Harley Race • Nancy Honeytree • Peeter Kümmel • Pierre Lacroix (ice hockey, born 1959)

Born in the same month (April 1899): Alan Arnett McLeod • Aleksander Klumberg • Alfred Blalock • Bertil Ohlin • Cemal Tollu • Duke Ellington • George O'Brien (actor) • Gustavs Celmiņš • Harold Osborn • Minoru Shirota • Oscar Rabin • Randall Thompson • Robert Casadesus • Vladimir Nabokov