A Brief Biography Of Percy Lavon Julian

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Percy Lavon Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama as the first child of James Sumner Julian and Elizabeth Lena Julian. Percy was raised by parents who deeply valued education. His mother, Elizabeth, was a school teacher. Percy’s father, James, was a mail railroad clerk for the U.S. Postal System.
Percy attended school through the eighth grade in Alabama’s public schools. Going to high school was not an option for Percy, since he was a black person. But that didn’t stop Percy from going into college to pursue his dream.
Percy Lavon Julian applied to DePauw University, where he had to take high school-level classes in the evening to catch up with classmates. It was very hard for Percy, but he kept trying and eventually graduated first in his class, with the Phi Beta Kappa honors.
After college, Julian accepted the position of being a chemistry instructor in Fisk University. He left when he received a scholarship to attend Harvard University to finish his master’s degree in 1923. In 1929, after the disappointment of not being able to pursue his doctoral studies, Julian received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study with the distinguished chemist Ernst Späth at the University of Vienna. Then he traveled all over the place for several years to teach black schools. Percy then lost his professorship at Howard University after an affair with a colleague's wife.
He was then interviewed at DuPont and numerous other chemical companies, all of which lost interest when they discovered that Percy was a black. Instead he became Director of Research at The Glidden Company, where he supervised white chemists. There he made very interesting discoveries, like how to make steroids out of natural resources.
Then after several years, Percy decide...

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2014. http://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/22969/.

Hawk, Heather. "Percy Julian." . N.p., 14 Sep 2004. Web. 27 Feb 2014. http://www.nndb.com/people/957/000160477. Flaze, Alexander. "Percy Julian ." . N.p., 21 january 2006. Web. 27 Feb 2014. http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/percy-julian.html. Hanington, Tom. "Giants of the Past Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975)." . N.p., 27 Jun
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