30 Facts About Carl Djerassi

Carl Djerassi was an Austrian-born Bulgarian-American pharmaceutical chemist, novelist, playwright and co-founder of Djerassi Resident Artists Program with Diane Wood Middlebrook.

Carl Djerassi is best known for his contribution to the development of oral contraceptive pills, nicknamed the "father of the pill".

Carl Djerassi's mother was Alice Friedmann, a Viennese dentist and physician.

In December 1939, Carl Djerassi arrived with his mother in the United States, nearly penniless.

Carl Djerassi's mother worked in a group practice in upstate New York.

Carl Djerassi started his college career at Newark Junior College after moving to the United States with his mother when he was 16.

Carl Djerassi previously had attended the American College of Sofia, a high school in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he became fluent in English.

In 1949 Carl Djerassi became associate director of research at Syntex in Mexico City and remained there through 1951.

Carl Djerassi has said that one factor influencing him to choose Syntex was that they had a DU spectrophotometer.

Carl Djerassi worked on a new synthesis of cortisone based on diosgenin, a steroid sapogenin derived from a Mexican wild yam.

Carl Djerassi's preparation was first administered as an oral contraceptive to animals by Gregory Goodwin Pincus and Min Chueh Chang and to women by John Rock.

In 1960 Carl Djerassi became a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, a position he held until 2002 but only part-time as he never left industry.

Carl Djerassi bought a large tract of land in San Mateo County, California, and started a cattle ranch called SMIP.

Carl Djerassi arranged for his Klee collections to be donated to the Albertina in Vienna and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, effective on his death.

Carl Djerassi pioneered novel physical research techniques for mass spectrometry and optical rotatory dispersion and applied them to the areas of organic chemistry and the life sciences.

In 1965 at Stanford University, nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg, computer scientist Edward Feigenbaum, and Carl Djerassi devised the computer program DENDRAL for the elucidation of the molecular structure of unknown organic compounds taken from known groups of such compounds, such as the alkaloids and the steroids.

Carl Djerassi was a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and was chairman of the Pharmanex Scientific Advisory Board.

Carl Djerassi wrote four autobiographies, the most recent of which, In Retrospect appeared in 2014.

Carl Djerassi wrote a number of plays which have been performed and extensively translated.

Carl Djerassi wrote five novels, four of which he described as "science-in-fiction", fiction that portrays the lives of real scientists, with all their accomplishments, conflicts, and aspirations.

Carl Djerassi's plays recognize the special contributions women make as scientists and to science, both directly and indirectly.

Carl Djerassi's plays have found their way into theaters around the globe and have been translated into many European and Asian languages.

Carl Djerassi repeatedly revised his plays and some of them have different versions and multiple endings.

Where possible, Carl Djerassi cooperated with directors in the production of dramatic performances.

Carl Djerassi wrote numerous poems that were published in journals or anthologies.

An award that eluded Carl Djerassi was the Nobel Prize, where he is considered one of the more notable "snubs" by the Nobel Committee.

One year after his second divorce, Carl Djerassi began a relationship with Diane Middlebrook, a Stanford University professor of English and biographer.

Carl Djerassi visited existing artist colonies, such as Yaddo and MacDowell, and decided to create his own, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

Carl Djerassi closed his cattle ranch and converted the barn and houses to residential and work space for artists.

Carl Djerassi died on January 30,2015, at the age of 91, from complications of liver and bone cancer.