EE Just Biography
(1883 - 1941)Just was unwilling to accept such a limited future for himself. He began teaching at Howard University after graduation, and eventually he managed to earn a doctorate from the University of Chicago. Dr. Just received international acclaim for work he completed during the summers from 1909 to 1930 at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. At MBL, he conducted thousands of experiments studying the fertilization of the marine mammal cell. In 1922, he successfully challenged Jaacque Loeb’s theory of artificial parthenogenesis, pushing the envelope. Using his research conducted at Wood’s Hole, he published his first book entitled, Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Mammals.
Although Dr. Just was considered a leader and authority for his work with cell development, as an African American, he experienced racism and prejudice. For this reason, Dr. Just decided to study in Europe in 1930. It was in Europe that he published his second book, The Biology of the Cell Surface. While in Europe in 1938 he published a number of papers and lectured on the topic of cell cytoplasm.
Throughout his life Just had problems obtaining funding for his work, partly because of racial discrimination and partly due to the general lack of funding for science during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He continued to teach on and off at Howard for the remainder of his life. Dr. Just died October 27, 1941 in Washington D.C.
It was in his Honor, our Society was named in his Honor.
Ref: Biography by Kenneth R. Manning, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just (1983).