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The Black Appollo of Science
Founder of Omega Psi Phi & Biologist of international fame...
>Ernest Everett Just, an eminent marine biologist, was born in Charleston, >South Carolina. Just's father, Charles Frazier Just, and Grandfather, >Charles >Just Sr. were dock builders. Seeking a substantial education, he attended >the >Industrial School of State College, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Kimball >Academy at Meriden, New Hampshire; and Dartmouth College, graduated in >1907. >Each school he attended was proud to have him because of his kindly >demeanor >and his unusual ability as a scholar. Accordingly each school he attended >honored him. >At Dartmouth he won the Phi Beta Kappa Key, the highest scholastic award to >be given to a student in an undergraduate college. Just was also on the >faculty of Howard University Medical School as a professor and head of the >Department of Physiology. >In 1915, after displaying unusual brilliancy in research, the National >Association for the Advancement of Colored People conferred upon him the >Spingarn Medal, which each year is given to a Negro who has been most >outstanding in achievement. The following year he obtained the degree of >Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago. >The honors that have since come to Dr. Just are too numerous to mention in >our limited space; but we shall list a few of them. He did his work so >well, >that he was selected as guest investigator, to engage in research at the >Kaiser Wilhem Institute fur Biologie. In 1919, he spent six months in >Biological Research at Naples, Italy. He had also at his disposal the >private >laboratories of several of the crowned heads of Europe. >For twenty years at least he did research worked at the Marine Biology >Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A gift from the Rosenwald Fund of >about $80,000.00 a year for several years made it possible for Dr. Just to >be >relieved of his undergraduate teaching assignment and devote all his time >to >research and the teaching of graduate students. >Aside from this, Dr. Just was selected by leading biologists of Germany as >the best fitted among world scholars to write a treatise on >fertilization. >Dr. Just was a member of the National Research Council, editor of the >international Council, editor of the international Journal, "Protoplasma." >He >was a member of the American Society of Zoologists, the American >Naturalists, >and a corresponding member of La Societe des Science Naturelles et >Mathematiques de France. 1936 >Dr. Just summarized his ideas that he made through the years in a book, >"The >Biology of the Cell Surface", which was published in 1939. The book >explained >the special significance of the outer cytoplasm, which Dr. Just called the >ectoplasm. When Germany and France went to war near the end of 1939, the >French government ordered all foreign scientists to leave the country. >Unable >to escape before Paris fell to the Germans, Dr. Just was captured and held >briefly in a prisoner-of-war camp before finally being allowed to return to >the United States in September 1940. Dr. Just went back to Howard, for he >had >nowhere else to go. Howard officials ordered him to return to teaching, but >he was too ill. Dr. Just's increasingly severe digestive troubles proved to >be due to cancer. Dr. Ernest Everett Just died on October 27, 1941. > As to why Just didn't get the Nobel Prize, there are several answers. >The >easiest is that the Nobel Prize is never awarded postumously, and Just's >contributions were not recognized until after his death. (Thus, neither >Hilde >Mangold nor Rosalind Franklin received Nobel Prizes). >The second answer is that just being an excellent scientist is no assurance >of winning the Nobel Prize. In Just's generation, neither Theodor Boveri >nor >E. B. Wilson received the Nobel Prize, and they were much better known than >Just and their work established chromosome individuality, the existence of >germinal >plasm, and the chromosomal basis of heredity and sex determination. >Third, embryologists are severely underrepresented in Nobel Prizes. (If >Just >were discriminated against by the Swedish Academy of Science in the 1940s, >I >think it more likely to be on the basis of his field than his race). Only >two >Nobel Prizes have been awarded for embryological work: the 1935 prize to >Hans >Spemann and the 1995 prize to Christianne Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric >Wieschaus >. Other embryologists who "should" have won the prize might include Viktor >Hamburger, Ross Granville Harrison, C.H. Waddington, and Just's own >mentor, F. R. Lillie. Embryologists didn't get much respect until recently. >The award is for Medicine and Physiology, and embryology was considered low >status among the physiologists. > >Detail info on Late Great Dr. Just >http://library.scsu.edu/Just.htm >http://www.princeton.edu/~mcbrown/display/just.html >http://inventorsmuseum.com/ErnestJust.htm |
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