Peoples Archive is pleased to present the stories of Carl Djerassi as the latest addition to it's science collection.
Carl Djerassi was born on the 29th of October in Vienna, Austria, though he spent most of his childhood in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 1939 he fled Bulgaria to escape the Nazi regime and in 1941 he emigrated to the U.S.A.
In America Djerassi studied at Kenyon College, Ohio and the University of Wisconsin after which he spent four years as a research chemist at Ciba Pharmaceutical Company in Summit, New Jersey. In 1949, he joined Syntex S.A. in Mexico City as associate director of chemical research. There his group worked on trying to synthesize cortisone from diosgenin, a steroidal substance found in Mexican yams, in 1951 they managed to successfully synthesise cortisone and in the same year they also synthesised the first effective oral contraceptive.
Djerassi also has a successful career as a writer, he began writing poems and short stories in the 1980's and published his first book "The Futurist and Other Stories" in 1988. He has gone on to write many books, poems and plays including two autobiographies, "Steroids Made it Possible" and "The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse".
