Percy Lavon Julian – African American History Month 2017 #BlackHistoryMonth
Today we celebrate the legacy of Percy Lavon Julian, an accomplished African-American chemist. Julian specialized in synthesizing drugs from natural plants (like soybean or yams), whose research eventually lead to the creation of two big-market drug sectors: cortisone (steroid) and birth-control pills.
He lived roller-coaster life filled with accomplishments and setbacks, some self-inflicted, while others were imposed on him by institutions or even by assailants within his residential community (such as the firebombing of his Oak Park (Chicago) home before he even moved in – he and his family were about to become the first African-American family in an otherwise all-white neighborhood).
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If you have a PBS THIRTEEN passport you can watch several videos on his story here. You can also read more about him here at biography.com, and of course here at Wikipedia. The videos below succinctly detail his life’s work. Percy Julian also has a 29¢ stamp in his honor.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
