Father of the pill became patron of young artists

The late chemist Carl Djerassi was a true renaissance man, a scientist who was also a teacher, writer and great patron of the arts

History: Chemist, playwright, noted birth control pioneer Carl Djerassi in an undated pic

He helped spark a sexual revolution in the 1960s and ’70s. But his role in the pioneering of birth control pills was just one achievement in the stellar career of chemist Dr Carl Djerassi. In the latter part of his life, Djerassi, who died last Friday, became a noted art collector, patron of young artists as well as a novelist and playwright, often philosophising on the ethics of science and medicine.

He was a modern-day renaissance man whose interests were broad despite his specific field of chemical expertise, something that reflected his upbringing in Austria at a time when it was a world leader in arts and sciences.

Djerassi was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. Both parents were doctors. His mother Alice (nee Friedmann) was an Austrian-born dentist and his father Samuel was specialist in venereal disease. There were expectations Carl would follow in their footsteps or perhaps study law, but at school he developed an interest in chemistry.

When his parents divorced, Alice moved with her son to Vienna where Djerassi was educated at a prestigious high school where students such as Freud and Viktor Frankl had also studied.

It should have been a natural trajectory to a great career in Austria, but the fact he was Jewish and the son of a Bulgarian father saw him denied citizenship in Nazi-dominated Austria.

Samuel remarried Alice to allow them both to escape Nazism and settle briefly in Sofia, Bulgaria, before they emigrated to America in 1939. After arriving in New York to have their last $20 stolen by an unscrupulous cabbie, Carl had a more positive experience being sent by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to live with the family of an industrial chemist at Newark in New Jersey.

At junior college in Newark he studied chemistry and then went on to Kenyon College in Ohio graduating summa cum laude with a degree in science. Working for a pharmaceutical company in 1942 he developed one of the first commercial antihistamines, patenting the drug. In 1943 he married Virginia Jeremiah.

Earning his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1945 he went to work for Syntex in New Mexico where he became associated director of research in 1949. In 1950 he divorced Virginia after having an affair with writer Norma Lundholm. He married her later that year and they had two children, Pamela and Dale.

In 1951 Djerassi was involved in the program to synthesise cortisone from a species of Mexican yam and is credited with being part of the team in 1951 that synthesised norethindrone, an ingredient of the first contraceptive pill. Although it was years before the first pill would come on the market, Djerassi is often called the “father of the pill”.

That discovery and others at Syntex made him a very wealthy man, so when he bought a cattle ranch he called it SMIP, an acronym for Syntex Made It Possible. He also became a collector of art, in particular the works of Paul Klee.

Associate professor of chemistry at Wayne State University from 1952-59, he was then full professor at Stanford University from 1960, where with Edward Feigenbaum, Bruce Buchanan and Joshua Lederberg he helped develop DENDRAL, an influential computer program considered a landmark in artificial intelligence and used to help determine chemical structure.

Having pioneered synthesised human hormone drugs, he turned his focus to hormone-based pest control in the ’60s starting his own company Zoecon in 1968.

His marriage to Norma ended in 1976 and in 1977 he began a relationship with Stanford literature professor and biographer Diane Middlebrook . They married in 1985.

The suicide of his artist daughter Pamela in 1978 made him wonder why he was collecting the work of dead artists when he could use his fortune to help young struggling artists. He donated his Klee collection to art museums and opened his ranch as a space for young artists.

In the late ’80s he turned to writing “science-in-fiction” stories, novels and plays that explained science and discussed various issues with science and technology.

Diane died in 2007 and last year Djerassi published a memoir titled In Retrospect: From The Pill To The Pen. He is survived by his son Dale, stepdaughter Leah Middlebrook and a grandson.

Originally published as Father of the pill became patron of young artists