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“J” is for Just, Ernest Everett (1883-1941)

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“J” is for Just, Ernest Everett (1883-1941). Marine biologist. A native Charlestonian, at age twelve, Just enrolled in the Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina. In 1907 he graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College. With few opportunities to pursue a career in science, he joined the faculty of Howard College. Just later earned his PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago. By 1912 he had established himself as an authority on fertilization. There followed, for the remainder of his life, international recognition of his work and publications—especially in Europe—together with bitterness and frustration, because no scientific appointments were available to him because as an African American. In 1939 Ernest Everett Just published Biology of the Cell Surface, a synthesis of much of his life’s work.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.