Carl Djerassi

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Carl Djerassi (2004)

Carl Djerassi (born October 29, 1923 in Vienna , Austria ; † January 30, 2015 in San Francisco , California , United States ) was a Bulgarian-American-Austrian chemist and writer . Djerassi was known for developing the first birth control pill . He was called "father of the pill", but just as often "mother of the pill" because he found this nickname more appropriate and also chose it as the title of an autobiography .

Life

Djerassi was the son of a couple of doctors. His mother Alice Friedmann was an Ashkenazi Jew from Vienna, his father Samuel Djerassi a Sephardic Jew from Bulgaria . Both families, paternal and maternal, were secular . His mother became a Bulgarian citizen through their marriage. Carl Djerassi was also a Bulgarian citizen from birth. He spent his first years in Sofia in Bulgaria. When he was five years old, his parents divorced and he and his mother returned to his native Vienna. There she received her Austrian citizenship back. His mother also applied for Austrian citizenship for her son. However, it was not granted to Carl Djerassi, so he remained a Bulgarian citizen.

After the " Anschluss of Austria " to the National Socialist German Reich , his father married his mother a second time in order to enable mother and child to leave the country. Djerassi and his mother first traveled to their father in Bulgaria in 1938 and emigrated from there to the USA in 1939 . At Djerassi's request, Eleanor Roosevelt donated him a college scholarship. He studied chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and received his doctorate in this subject under Alfred L. Wilds in 1945 with the topic The partial aromatization of steroids and the dienone-phenone rearrangement . In the same year he received American citizenship .

In the early 1950s, Luis E. Miramontes and Djerassi succeeded in artificially producing the sex hormone norethisterone , a gestagen , as researchers for Syntex SA in Mexico City . With Gregory Pincus and John Rock , they developed the first birth control pill in 1951. Djerassi rejected the name birth control pill because the pill is not a means against babies, but a means for the independence and self-determination of women. From 1959 Djerassi taught at Stanford University . As a scientist, he had around 1200 publications. In his later years his nickname “mother of the pill” became annoying because he didn't want to see himself reduced to a single achievement.

Djerassi was married three times. His first marriage was divorced in 1950. His second marriage that same year, which also ended in divorce in 1976, resulted in a son and a daughter. The latter committed suicide in 1978. In 1985 Djerassi was married to Diane Middlebrook , who died in 2007 , a well-known biographer and professor at Stanford University .

Djerassi only received Austrian citizenship in 2004 because this was “in the interests of the republic” and later had a residence in Vienna, but was allowed to keep his American citizenship.

Djerassi owned an extensive collection of works by Paul Klee , which can be seen in a permanent exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , half of which became the property of this museum after his death. The other half went to the Albertina in Vienna.

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

Literary publications

In the mid-1980s Djerassi began to publish poetry and short stories , and invented the new genre of novels "Science-in-fiction" in which he published the four books Cantors Dilemma, Das Bourbaki Gambit, Menachems Same and NO . Not infrequently he was criticized by colleagues for his openness in dealing with the weaknesses and human abysses in science. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in May 2008, Carl Djerassi said: “Chemists are machos who do research in the laboratory and do not understand that literature is much more difficult. I'm totally alone there. I don't have anyone there, but I don't need anyone either. ”Djerassi was also the author of several plays.

Nonfiction books and autobiographies

  • Optical Rotatory Dispersion . McGraw-Hill & Company, 1960.
  • The Politics of Contraception . WH Freeman & Company, 1981, ISBN 0-7167-1342-X .
  • Steroids Made it Possible (Profiles, Pathways, and Dreams) . American Chemical Society , 1990, ISBN 0-8412-1773-4 (autobiographical).
  • The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse . Basic Books, New York 1992, ISBN 0-465-05758-6 (English autobiography).
  • From the Lab into The World: A Pill for People, Pets, and Bugs . American Chemical Society, 1994, ISBN 0-8412-2808-6 .
  • Paul Klee: Masterpieces of the Djerassi Collection . (coeditor), Prestel Publishing, 2002, ISBN 3-7913-2779-8 .
  • Dalla pillola alla penna . Di Renzo Editore, 2004, ISBN 88-8323-086-8 (Italian autobiography).
  • This Man's Pill. Sex, art and immortality. Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck 2001, ISBN 978-3-85218-366-4 (German autobiography, in English: This Man's Pill. Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill . Oxford University Press, USA, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860695 -8 ).

fiction

Science in fiction

Science-in-theater

theatre

  • LA Theater Works . Audio Theater Collection CD, 2004, ISBN 1-58081-286-4 .
  • Four Jews on Parnassus
  • Foreplay
  • ego

Poetry anthologies

Awards and honors

bibliography

English

  • The politics of Contraception 1979
  • Cantor's Dilemma 1989
  • The Futurist and Other Stories 1989
  • The Bourbaki Gambit 1991
  • The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse. The Autobiography 1991
  • Marx, Deceased
  • Menachem's Seed
  • NO 1998
  • To Immaculate Misconception 2000
  • Newton's Darkness: Two Dramatic Views (co-author David Pinner) 2003

German

  • Cantor's Dilemma 1991
  • The mother of the pill. An autobiography 1991 ( online )
  • The Futurist and Other Stories 1991
  • Marx, various 1994
  • Menachem's Same 1996
  • NO 1998
  • From the pill to the PC. An Autobiography - New Episode 1998
  • How I hit Coca-Cola and other stories . Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 2000, ISBN 978-3-251-00482-9 .
  • Immaculate: Sex in the Age of Reproducibility. Piece in two acts 2000
  • This Man's Pill. Sex, art and immortality . Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck 2001, ISBN 978-3-85218-366-4 .
  • Oxygen. A piece in two acts (co-author Roald Hoffmann ) 2001
  • Tribal Secrets (includes Cantor's Dilemma and The Bourbaki Gambit ) 2002
  • Ego 2004
  • Secrets Revealed (includes NO and Menachem's Seed ). Roman, Verlag Haymon, Innsbruck / Vienna 2005, ISBN 978-3-85218-471-5 .
  • Phallstricke | Taboos - Two plays from the worlds of science and art . Verlag Haymon, Innsbruck-Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-85218-502-6 .
  • Four Jews on Mount Parnassus - A conversation: Benjamin-Adorno-Scholem-Schönberg . Verlag Haymon, Innsbruck / Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85218-555-2 .
  • Foreplay . Verlag Haymon, Innsbruck / Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-85218-673-3
  • Diary of Resentment. A Diary of Pique 1983-1984 . Verlag Haymon, Innsbruck / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-85218-719-8
  • The shadow collector. The very last autobiography. Verlag Haymon, Innsbruck / Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-85218-720-4
  • Condemned to live. Novel. From the American by Steffen Beilich. Verlag Haymon, Innsbruck / Vienna 2015. ISBN 978-3-7099-7180-2

Movie

  • Carl Djerassi - My Life. Film by Joachim Haupt. Parnass Film, Germany 2009. Premiere in the Jewish Museum Berlin . First broadcast on ARTE on August 22, 2009
  • In the beginning was the pill - The Three Lives of Carl Djerassi Film by Claus Spahn . WDR 2000
  • “Know up to date: the sexual revolution”, 3sat on March 17th, 2010

See also

Web links

Commons : Carl Djerassi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f "Mother of the Pill": Carl Djerassi succumbs to cancer. Obituary to Vorarlberg Online from January 31, 2015 (accessed February 1, 2015).
  2. ↑ Djerassi C: Steroid oral contraceptives . In: Science . 151, 1966, pp. 1055-1061.
  3. ↑ Djerassi basically saw the chemist as the "mother" of a medicinal preparation, since the chemist provides the substance, similar to how the mother provides the egg cell during reproduction. Cf. Carl Djerassi: The Man of Productive Insecurity zeit.de, January 10, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b Carl Djerassic My Life. Film by Joachim Haupt. FRG 2008.
  5. ^ A b c d Robert D. McFadden: Carl Djerassi, 91, a Creator of the Birth Control Pill, Dies. Obituary in The New York Times on January 31, 2015 (accessed January 31, 2015).
  6. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Carl Djerassi at academictree.org, accessed on January 30, 2018.
  7. ↑ Ellen Foley: Carl Djerassi PhD'45 , November 2, 2012.
  8. ↑ The co-inventor of the "pill" is dead welt.de, January 31, 2015.
  9. ↑ Inventor of the birth control pill: The man who doesn't want to be a mother spiegel.de, February 7, 2014.
  10. ↑ Carl Djerassi on science-in-fiction . Retrieved April 25, 2013. (English).
  11. ^ Postage stamp with the portrait of Carl Djerassi .
  12. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB).
  13. ↑ Carl Djerassi receives an honorary doctorate , in: mundo - the magazine of the Technical University of Dortmund, issue 10/2009, p. 62.
  14. ↑ Carl Djerassi - A life with many accents .
  15. ↑ Honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg on IDW-online.
  16. ↑ Carl Djerassi receives an honorary doctorate
  17. ^ Honorary doctorate for Carl Djerassi. Press release, website of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, October 15, 2013, accessed on October 24, 2013.
  18. ↑ Carl Djerassi received an honorary doctorate. Website of the University of Innsbruck, accessed on June 10, 2014.
  19. ↑ Carl Djerassi receives an honorary doctorate from the Mainz University Medical Center. Website of the University of Mainz, accessed on June 17, 2014.
  20. ↑ haymonverlag.at ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.haymonverlag.at
  21. ↑ Jewish General: Sexy Pill Inventor
personal data
SURNAME Djerassi, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bulgarian-American-Austrian chemist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 2015
Place of death San Francisco , California , United States