Julian, Percy Lavon

Extract

Julian, Percy Lavon (11 April 1899–19 April 1975), chemist, was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of James Sumner Julian, a railway mail clerk, and Elizabeth Lena Adams, a teacher. He received his A.B. from DePauw University in 1920, and for the next two years he taught chemistry at Fisk University. In 1922 he was awarded Harvard University’s Austin Fellowship in chemistry; he received his M.A. from that school in 1923. He remained at Harvard for three more years as a research assistant in biophysics and organic chemistry. In 1926 he joined the faculty at West Virginia State College, and in 1928 he became associate professor and head of the chemistry department at Howard University. The following year he was awarded a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation’s General Education Board to pursue his doctorate at the University of Vienna in Austria, where he earned that degree in organic chemistry in 1931. After graduating he returned to Howard, but he left in 1932 to accept a position as chemistry professor and research fellow at DePauw....