COMMENT OBITUARY Carl Djerassi (1923–2015) , writer and contraceptive-pill pioneer.

ew scientists have changed awarded and the personal dynamics society as much as Carl Djerassi of research. The work of which he was did. By chemically synthesizing most proud, however, was Foreplay Fa mimic of the pro- (2011), which explored the sexual

gesterone, Djerassi paved the way for intrigues between a quartet of early- BETTMANN/CORBIS the oral contraceptive pill, allowing twentieth-century German intellec- women for the first time reliably to tuals. His investment in the arts was take control of their own reproduc- profound and literal. Motivated by the tive choices. Djerassi’s conviction that suicide of his artist daughter Pamela ‘the pill’ made the sexual liberaliza- in 1978, he founded an artists’ colony tion of the 1960s possible is widely in Woodside, California, which has shared, and chemical control of the hosted more than 2,000 residencies. fertility cycle was a key ingredient in Even when Carl was forced to use a subsequent advances in reproductive walking stick, it was easy to imagine technologies, beginning with in vitro that he had simply forbidden old age fertilization (IVF) in the late 1960s. to plague him. “I had regaled my wife This alone would have warranted [Stanford professor of English Diane Djerassi’s acclaim as a scientist. But Middlebrook] for years with macho he also made important contributions pride that I intended … to become the to the synthesis of antihistamines first non-retired centenarian profes- and other natural products, pest sor at Stanford,” he wrote. “I always control using hormone derivatives, allowed the barest of smiles to cross mass spectrometry and computer- my face whenever I bragged in that ized methods for the determination fashion.” That was Djerassi all over: of complex molecular structures. He proud to the point of arrogance, but spoke and wrote extensively about at the same time mocking his own the role of science in society and bombast. the ethical dilemmas it brings up. He also to create a commercial contraceptive pill. No one who knew Carl would deny that wrote fiction and plays. Calling himself an Such pills were first approved in the United there were prickly aspects to his charac- “intellectual polygamist”, he showed how States in 1960. ter. He did not aspire to modesty and was science could and should make its presence The previous year, Djerassi had joined quick to perceive slights. But his determi- felt outside the laboratory. the chemistry department at Stanford nation to grasp and grapple with what it Djerassi, who died on 30 January University in California, where he stayed means to be human in the modern age was aged 91, was born to Jewish parents in until he retired in 2002. His connection admirable. His passion for the communi- in 1923. His parents separated in with the Corporation, of which cation of scientific ideas was coupled with the late 1930s, and in 1939, following the he became director in 1960, and with the a profound aesthetic sensibility, as shown Nazi annexation of Austria, he left with insect-control company Zoecon, which he by his deep appreciation for the artist Paul his mother for the United States. His PhD founded in 1968, made him rich. Numer- Klee, several of whose works he owned. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison ous awards followed. Incredulity that Carl was never awarded concerned the chemical transformation of Whereas many would have rested on a Nobel Prize was widely shared among his human male and female sex . In their laurels, in his seventh decade Djerassi peers, and quite possibly by Carl himself. 1942, he joined the pharmaceutical com- began a career as a writer and playwright, And his ambitions in writing and commu- pany Ciba in , where he took out starting with the novel Cantor’s Dilemma nication were not always welcomed even in a patent on one of the first synthetic anti- (1989). He styled himself an “intellectual his own institution, where he was once told histamines. smuggler”, bringing science, under the that “in recent years your interests have been Djerassi started working at the small guise of entertainment (which he called far removed from those most highly valued pharmaceutical company Syntex in Mexico science-in-fiction), to audiences who by your department”. City in 1949. There he established how to might normally have recoiled from it. Hopefully academia is more ready now synthesize from a natural prod- His most successful play, Oxygen (2001), to recognize the value, indeed necessity, of uct derived from the Mexican yam. He written with chemistry Nobel laureate professional scientists who turn their ener- then found that the same starting com- , explored the delib- gies to public engagement and to embedding pound could yield , a mimic erations of a Nobel committee deciding science in its social context. Few have tried of , which controls the female whether to award a retrospective prize harder to do that than Carl Djerassi. ■ menstrual cycle. The discovery was devel- for the element’s discovery to Antoine oped in the late 1950s by biologist Gregory Lavoisier, Carl Wilhelm Scheele or Joseph Philip Ball is a science writer based in Pincus and gynaecologist John Rock, both Priestley. Like several of Djerassi’s other . of whom had conducted early work on IVF, works, it examined how scientific credit is e-mail: [email protected]

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