Ernest Everett Just

Ernest Everett Just ( born August 14, 1883 in Charleston, South Carolina, † October 27, 1941 ) was an American biologist of African-American descent. Just advocated to study cells under normal conditions rather than in the laboratory. His most important works were concerned with the surface of the egg.

Life and work

Childhood and youth

Just was born in 1883 in Charleston, South Carolina, son of Charles Frazier Just Jr. and Mary Matthews Just. His father and grandfather were dockworkers. When he was four, both died within a year. Then the mother Just and his two siblings had to bring alone. With 13 Just made ​​the decision to become a teacher. His mother sent him to a boarding school in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Because the schools were not good for blacks in the south, he went with 16 in the north. There he attended the college preparatory school Kimball Union Academy. He graduated from the actually four -year program in just three years and joined the school as the best in his class from.

After that, he went to Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. In 1907 he completed his studies with " magna cum laude".

Career

After graduating, he took a teaching position at Howard University in Washington, DC on. In 1912 he was chairman of the Department of Zoology. This he remained until his death. He met Frank Rattray Lillie know in the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, invited him. From this point on spent just every summer there for some time. In 1915 he received the Spingarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ). 1916 Just acquired his PhD degree with his work on the fertilization. In the following years Just acquired international recognition with his work on the fertilization. His book, Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Mammals underwent major recognition in the scientific community. Just Because in America suffered under racial prejudice, he emigrated in 1929 to Europe. End of January 1929, he met a company of his 15 - year-old daughter, at the Zoological Research Station Naples, where he worked as a visiting professor. There he met Margret Boveri know who was employed there as a secretary. Between the two, a relationship that persisted even after Just's time in Naples, as he moved to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin- Dahlem to his temporary return to the U.S. on January 11, 1930 developed. The relationship ended when Just in the summer of 1931, met his future wife, Hedwig Schnetzler. After the Nazi seizure of power, the family fled to France. After the German invasion he was briefly in a prison camp. His family, however, was bought out by the Americans. On October 27, 1941, he died of cancer.

Private

In 1911 he founded together with his friends Edgar Amos Love, Oscar James Cooper and Frank Coleman, the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.