EDITORIAL

Carl Djerassi, structural chemist turned author/playwright,has published a new autobiography, In Retrospect: From the Pillto the Pen

Imperial College Press, London, 2014, 388 pp, 94 pictures

Istvan Hargittai

� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract The stereochemist and steroid chemist Carl

Djerassi turned poet, novelist, and playwright, published

another autobiography taking stock of his prolific produc-

tion of science-in-fiction during the last decades. He has

been successful in bridging the gap between science and

art.

Keywords Carl Djerassi � Structure elucidation � Physical

methods � Two cultures � Science-in-fiction

Carl Djerassi was born in 1923 in Vienna to physician

parents; his mother was Austrian and his father Bulgarian.

Due to the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, the

Anschluss, in 1938, Carl at the age of 15 became a Jewish

refugee, first in Bulgaria and then in the United States. He

received his education at Kenyon College in Gambier,

Ohio (BA summa cum laude 1942) and at the University of

Wisconsin (PhD 1945). He spent four years at CIBA

Pharmaceutical in New Jersey before he joined Syntex

Company in Mexico City. In 1996, he stated, ‘‘The two

years I spent in Mexico were the most productive years in

my scientific life.’’ [Ref 1, p. 78] Between 1952 and 1959,

he was Professor of Chemistry at Wayne State University

and from 1959, at Stanford University. He became Pro-

fessor of Chemistry Emeritus in 2002. Between 1957 and

1988, he also held company positions. He did not mix the

two activities; his academic research produced research

papers, and his industrial work produced patents in dif-

ferent areas.

He has the rare distinction of having received both the US

National Medal of Science (in 1973, from President Richard

M. Nixon) and the US National Medal of Technology (in

1991, from President George H. W. Bush). His awards

include among many others, the first Wolf Prize in Chemistry

(Israel 1978), the Priestley Medal (American Chemical

Society 1992), and 34 honorary doctorates. In 2004, the

Austrian Post Office issued a Djerassi postage stamp in his

honor. He has been a member or foreign member of the most

prestigious scientific societies, such as the US National

Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europaea, the Royal

Society (London), the Leopoldina (Germany), the Royal

Swedish Academy of Sciences, and many more. Today, he is

a celebrated author and playwright, and theaters play his

dramas (translated in over 20 languages) in different corners

of the world. First, he had become one of the foremost

research chemists internationally.

Academically, his interest was in structure elucidation

of organic substances. Uncovering the structures of com-

plex organic compounds used to be an exceptional

achievement, even though today it falls into the domain of

applied spectroscopy. However, a great deal of chemical

knowledge and experience went into such studies at the

time of Djerassi’s embarking on his career. He was always

in the forefront of his science and greatly contributed to the

application of physical techniques to structure elucidation.

He started with ultraviolet spectroscopy, then infrared

spectroscopy, followed by NMR spectroscopy and mass

spectrometry as well as more specialized techniques, such

as chiroptical methods, electron spin resonance spectros-

copy, and others. He authored a scientific monograph about

optical rotatory dispersion and its application to organic

chemistry, edited a monograph on steroid chemistry, and

co-authored four scientific monographs about the inter-

pretation of mass spectra of organic compounds and about

I. Hargittai (&)

Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry,

Budapest University of Technology and Economics,

PO Box 91, 1521 Budapest, Hungary

e-mail: istvan.hargittai@gmail.com

123

Struct Chem (2014) 25:1597–1600

DOI 10.1007/s11224-014-0508-1

the structure elucidation of natural products by mass

spectrometry.

At one point, in the 1970s, when the use of physical

techniques in structure elucidation had become routine,

Djerassi with his Stanford colleagues Joshua Lederberg and

Edward Feigenbaum extended his arsenal of approaches to

computer-aided structure elucidation. He did not just fol-

low the lead of others; rather, as a pioneer, he was curious

Carl Djerassi at 90, in 2013, in the Hargittais’ home during a visit in Budapest (photo by Istvan Hargittai)

1598 Struct Chem (2014) 25:1597–1600

123

about the possibilities as well as the limitations of this new

approach. He involved his students in these tests. He

decided to confront the ‘‘computer’’ with the sum of

information they collected about specific structures, using

the physical techniques (save X-ray crystallography whose

information was usually unambiguous), and see what the

‘‘computer’’ came up with. This was a novel way of

looking for structures, widely applied today, but Djerassi’s

innovation was pivotal in making it into a useful tool.

Djerassi published over one thousand research papers

and his main involvement was in steroid chemistry. He was

one of the founders of the field of marine natural products

chemistry together with Paul Scheuer. Beside his principal

contribution to fundamental science, his best-known

achievement from a societal point of view was the first

synthesis in 1951 of an oral contraceptive, the ‘‘Pill,’’ back

in his Mexican period.

Djerassi produced several volumes of autobiography and

this latest has the title In Retrospect: From the Pill to the Pen

[2]. His transformation from a chemistry professor to writer

and playwright did not happen overnight; rather, it was a

gradual process. In the mid-1980s, he started writing and

publishing poetry, novels, and, ultimately, dramas for the

theater. When in 1996, I asked Djerassi whether he envi-

sioned a mission for himself in bridging the gulf between the

two cultures, he responded: ‘‘This is the mission. This gulf is

one of the most important social problems today, the gulf

between the scientifically literate constituency, which is a

very small portion of the population, and the intelligent lit-

erate community, which is scientifically totally illiterate.

This is also part of the reason for chemophobia in contem-

porary society. The important factor, of course, is the read-

ership, and this is why I decided to use fiction. I call it

‘science-in-fiction’ because I’d like to smuggle concepts of

the scientific culture or behavior into the conscience of

people who are not interested in science.’’ [Ref 1, p. 90]

Djerassi first wrote about his career focusing on his

chemistry in a volume published in 1990 by the American

Chemical Society [3]. Then followed a more complete

autobiography in 1992 that did no longer focus only on his

chemistry [4]. The fiftieth anniversary of the synthesis of

the oral contraceptive served as occasion for another look

back on his life [5]. The next volume in 2008—in his

opinion the best he ever wrote—was also in part of auto-

biographic character even though it did not even deal with

scientists [6]. Djerassi is a unique author, but it is not

unique that all his books of fiction also have autobio-

graphical relevance.

The latest autobiography covers more than the two

decades since the 1992 Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas’

Horse. It provides truly a retrospect of his last 25 years.

Djerassi is taking a second look at his life and oeuvre, but

outside of chemistry. He refers to Flaubert’s saying, ‘‘An

autobiography? … Wait 20 years to write about a painful

experience,’’ but Djerassi extends his retrospective to the

present day [Ref 2, p. 3].

The transformation from scientist to writer and play-

wright was a long process. In 1996, he told me that if I had

asked him about it five years before, ‘‘I would have said that

I was a chemistry professor who was also writing fiction.

Today [1996] I’m a novelist who is still a professor of

chemistry.’’ [Ref 1, p. 90] In the autobiography under

review, though, he points to a pivotal point in this trans-

formation. In 1985, he was diagnosed with colon cancer; he

took stock of his aspirations, and came to a conclusion. He

decided that ‘‘… for the remaining years … I would attempt

a new intellectual life as a writer, very different from what I

had done for the preceding forty-three years as a scientist: to

explore another creative world, beyond science, beyond

research and its applications, with which I wanted to deal

directly and to do so in the seemingly most unscientific

manner of them all, namely in fiction.’’ [Ref 2, p. 243]

Djerassi has been incredibly prolific during the past

decades in his newly found profession. He has written

poetry, novels, and plays and it is intriguing to skim his

production through his eyes in this new volume. He is a

great storyteller, which comes through the pages of this

book. In 2013, he came to Budapest for a brief visit, and we

had a gathering in our home in his honor. In preparation for

his visit, I asked him whether he had any special wish and

he responded that in addition to the Jewish Museum, he

would be happy to meet with ‘‘Budapest intellectuals’’ (just

as a decade before, James D. Watson expressed a similar

desire for the program of his visit). Djerassi then kept

spellbound a group of ‘‘Budapest intellectuals’’ for hours

and as I am reading this new autobiography, I am reliving

the experience in these pages.

He wrote a poem for his sixtieth birthday, ‘‘The clock

runs backward,’’ from which there is an excerpt in this new

volume (the full poem is reproduced in Ref 5, p. 7).

Referring back to his forties, he says in the poem,

‘‘But wasn’t that the time

His loneliness had first begun?

Or was it earlier?

Why else would one collect,

Except to fill a void?’’

Now, in 2014, he augments this thought ‘‘… my current

solution is producing rather than collecting; working rather

than moping; moving rather than relaxing. My travel

schedule … [is] one of my idiosyncratic antidotes to

loneliness.’’ [Ref 2, p. 325]

Keeping with the retrospective character of this latest

Djerassi book, I counted that we have 15 of his volumes on

our shelves at home. He discusses many of his books and

plays In Retrospect and illustrates his description with

Struct Chem (2014) 25:1597–1600 1599

123

excerpts from the plays that truly convey their flavor. Here

we offer a few words about two of them.

Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann jointly wrote Oxy-

gen, which is about priorities of discoveries and about the

Nobel Prize, using a clever plot. For the celebration of the

centennial of the first Nobel Prize in 2001, the Nobel

Committee decides to establish a retro-Nobel Prize for

discoveries preceding those that have been considered for

the existing Nobel awards. It happens that the retro-Nobel

Committee has a no-easier job of selecting the winner than

the judgment about current Nobel Prizes. The selection of

the discovery is not difficult; they decide to choose the

discovery of oxygen. However, making the choice among

Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestley, and Carl Wilhelm

Scheele is hard. There are a number of issues to consider

and high on their list is priority. Djerassi remarks in his

autobiography, ‘‘One of the main themes in Oxygen is the

preoccupation by many scientists with priority—one of the

most common but also ugliest behavioral features of the

scientific community.’’ [Ref 2, p. 277] My wife and I saw

Oxygen in 2001 in the Riverside Studio Theater in London.

It was the premiere and both authors were present. There

was a sympathetic audience and there was success. The

critic of The Scientist noted, ‘‘The only thing that is certain

at play’s end is this: Science has changed the world during

the last 200 years, but the scientists, the human beings

behind the discoveries, have not.’’ [7]

The play Phallacy [8] is about the reattribution of a major

piece of art from one period to another; thus, it is not about

forgery, but scientific pride and conviction. The play involves

art historians and analytical chemists. Djerassi is a chemist and

an art collector and is at home in both areas. It is based on a true

story in the circumstances he describes. It is also realistic if

merely chemical research or scientific research is concerned,

again, excluding direct fraud, and considering only the com-

mon occurrence when a researcher expects something in the

course of research and does find it even though it is not there. I

mention here a simple, well-documented case.

When the compound OClF3 was produced for the first time,

by analogy, the well-known trigonal symmetric geometry of

OPF3 was suggested for its structure. The vibrational spectra of

OClF3 were duly interpreted in terms of trigonal symmetric

geometry with the O=Cl bond and its continuation being the

three-fold axis. However, Ronald Gillespie, relying on his

newly established valence-shell-electron-pair repulsion

(VSEPR) model, proposed instead a trigonal bipyramidal

arrangement of the electron pairs of the chlorine valence shell

and a lower CS symmetry model for the geometry. Thus,

Gillespie sent back the spectroscopists to extend their experi-

mental range and reinterpret their findings. Indeed, a reanalysis

of the extended spectra unambiguously confirmed the pre-

dictions of the VSEPR model [9]. This was a simple case and I

offered it here to show that Djerassi’s story might reflect

common occurrences even in rudimentary chemical research.

Incidentally, Djerassi’s choice for spelling Phallacy

rather than fallacy, was, as he told me (by e-mail on August

30, 2014), ‘‘because in the play, the phallus of the Roman

sculpture, played such an important role.’’ My wife and I

saw the piece in 2007 in an off-Broadway theater in

Manhattan, the Cherry Lane Theater. The theater was full,

Djerassi was present, and it was a success. Phallacy

received a host of appreciative reviews in The New Yorker

and other prestigious publications [10].

An incredibly exciting life offers itself for writing about it,

yet a book from it is not necessarily on a par with the

extraordinary character of the life. On the other hand, an

excellent writer may be able to write a book, which spell

bounds its readers, even if the life he/she writes about is rather

common. What then, when an extraordinary author takes

account of an extraordinary life? It is highly probable that a

masterpiece emerges, and this is what Djerassi’s In Retrospect

is. I recommend Djerassi’s probably last autobiography for the

broadest circle of chemists, scientists, laypersons alike. They

will feel enriched, informed, and entertained.

References

1. Hargittai I (2000) Carl Djerassi. In: Hargittai M (ed) Candid

Science I: Conversations with Famous Chemists (Chap. 6).

Imperial College Press, London, pp 72–91

2. Djerassi C (2014) In Retrospect: From the Pill to the Pen.

Imperial College Press, London

3. Djerassi C (1990) Steroids Made it Possible. American Chemical

Society Books, Washington, DC

4. Djerassi C (1992) The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas’ Horse:

An Autobiography. Basic Books, New York

5. Djerassi C (2001) This Man’s Pill—Reflections on the 50th

Birthday of the Pill. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New

York

6. Djerassi C (2008) Four Jews on Parnassus—A Conversation:

Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem, Schonberg. Columbia University

Press, New York

7. Rayl AJS (2001) Oxygen: Putting a Human Face in Science.

Renowned chemists advance science through the arts. The Sci-

entist, October 15, New York

8. Djerassi C (2012) Chemistry in Theater: Insufficiency, Phallacy

or both. Imperial College Press, London

9. Gillespie RJ, Hargittai I (2012) The VSEPR Model of Molecular

Geometry. Dover, Mineola, NY

10. http://www.djerassi.com/phallacy/reviewquotes.html (accessed on

1 Sept 2014)

1600 Struct Chem (2014) 25:1597–1600

123