
Percy Julian
Percy Julian was born in 1899 in Montgomery, Alabama, and attended segregated schools through the eighth grade since there were no high schools open to Black students. He went on to attend DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he had to take high school-level classes in the evening to get him up to the academic level of his peers. In spite of this challenging start, he graduated first in his class, with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and lived to become a pioneering research chemist specializing in medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids, and birth control pills.