This Man’s Pill

Carl Djerassi was an exceptional and impressive person. He was highly productive and extremely successful in various areas. It is always the special mixture of traits and biographical circumstances that makes an individual unique and memorable.

Born in 1923 in Vienna to a Bulgarian father and an Austrian mother, he soon moved to Sofia with the family. Both parents were physicians and after their divorce, the mother returned together with the boy to Vienna. Due to their Jewish background, they decided to escape the Nazi regime in 1938/39 by emigrating from Vienna to the United States via Bulgaria. As usually the case with almost all Jewish immigrants, starting a new life in the US was extremely tough and money was scarce. However, his mother managed to ensure the economic survival of both and the education of her son. Later on, Carl Djerassi succeeded to get a scholarship. Based on this funding he studied chemistry and accomplished his Ph.D. in 1945 at the University of Wisconsin. He then decided to start a career in the pharmaceutical industry beginning at CIBA and later he joined Syntex, a small pharmaceutical company located in Mexico City, as an associate director. Syntex’s business at that time was the development of manufacturing procedures for therapeutic steroids based on the extraction of precursors from Mexican wild Yam – a native plant abundant in this area. At Syntex he was involved in the chemical synthesis of cortisone and succeeded in synthesizing for the first time norethisterone, thereby providing the basis for the development of oral contraceptives.

Carl Djerassi in 2004 during the Heritage Day at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. Photograph by Douglas A. Lockard. Reproduced with kind permission of the Chemical Heritage Foundation (http://www.chemheritage.org/visit/events/awards/heritage-day-awards/past-winners–aic.aspx). (Color figure available online only)

In 1959, he became professor at Stanford University and a faculty member. He extended his spectrum of research to other applications with potential everyday benefits like crop protection by hormonal control of insect maturation. His patents rapidly bore economical fruits that enabled him to indulge his passion for arts. He started founding his own private Paul-Klee art collection and to support young promising artists by establishing an artist’s residency on his property in the Woodside hills near Palo Alto. The latter was a haunting and remarkable consequence from a personal tragedy: his daughter Pamela – herself an artist – committed suicide in 1978. In the 80’s, Carl Djerassi started a literary career writing novels (e. g., Cantor’s Dilemma, The Bourbaki Gambit) and plays addressing several aspects of success, weakness, and human error in the world of science – processing his own experience of life – that he called himself “science-in-fiction”.

It was fascinating to meet Carl Djerassi on several occasions. I literally stumbled across him when I newly arrived as a postdoc at Stanford University. Richard Roth – my principal investigator at that time – strongly encouraged me to read “The Bourbaki Gambit” and “Cantor’s Dilemma” in order to improve my dreadful English language skill at that time. I was impressed by his personality when I met Carl Djerassi at some of the department’s seminars. His attitude was really bright and optimistic and this is best illustrated that he actively enjoyed skiing despite being handicapped by an ankylotic knee due to a protracted joint infection in his early years. During discussions on moral issues related to the pill he took the position that oral contraceptives are not directed against human life but rather to help supporting female independence. In this way, he regarded himself as a male emancipator, and it is an indicator for both, his liberal spirit and his fine sense of humor that he consequently termed himself as “mother of the pill”. At the German Endocrine Society’s meeting 2005 in Münster he gave a fascinating talk on “Sex in Times of Reproduction Techniques”. He still had sustained his charming style of a gentleman and a warm Viennese accent – the latter despite living overseas for so many decades.

Carl Djerassi died on January 30^th 2015 in San Francisco at the age of 91. He was not only a brilliant scientist and pioneer of hormone research, an inspiring author, and a patron of arts – he was a stimulating thought leader with permanent impact on human life and society – a modern precious philanthropist. We highly acknowledge his brilliant and long lasting accomplishments and respectfully bow to him.

Andreas Barthel, MD, MSc
Stefan R. Bornstein, MD, PhD