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Ernest Everett Just
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ernest Everett Just (August 14, 1883 – October 27, 1941) was a U.S. biologist. He was the first recipient of the Spingarn Medal in 1915.
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Early life
Dr. Ernest Everett Just was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1883 to Charles Frazier and Mary Matthews Just.
He attended Kimball Union Academy, a boarding school in Meriden, New Hampshire, in preparation for college. Ernest completed the four-year course of study in only three years.
Ernest went on to attend Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1907 and was the only student [citation needed] who graduated magna cum laude ("with great praise"). Ernest won special honors in botany, history, and sociology and was designated as a Rufus Choate scholar for two years. Earnest also attended the historically black institution now referred to as South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Career
In 1907 Dr. Just began to teach at Howard University, an historically black college in Washington, DC. He taught at Howard from 1909 until his death in 1941. In 1909, he became a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Dr. Just published more than 50 scientific papers over 20 years based on research conducted during summers at Woods Hole.
On November 17, 1911 at Howard University, Dr. Just along with three students— Edgar Amos Love, Oscar John Cooper, and Frank Coleman, established Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. The name Omega Psi Phi was derived from a Greek phrase meaning "friendship is essential to the soul", and became the fraternity's motto. Manhood, scholarship, perseverance and uplift were adopted as Omega's cardinal principles.
In 1916, Ernest Just received his Ph.D. in experimental embryology, with a thesis on the mechanics of fertilization, from the University of Chicago.
Legacy
In his scholarly work Dr. Just showed all the traits of a true scholar. He was unostentatious and modest in his personality. His inherent ability, scientific training, creative imagination, and industry were the basis for success in his field of zoology.
Contributions on the physiology of development were the legacy of Dr. Just's research. His work on the subjects of fertilization, experimental parthenogenesis, hydration, cell division, dehydration in living cells, the effect of ultra violet rays in increasing chromosome number in animals and in altering the organization of the egg with special reference to polarity.
Dr. Ernest Just was also one of the authors of General Cytology, published in 1924. The list of authors includes, among other eminent zoologists: Dr. Frank R. Lille of the University of Chicago; Dr. T.H. Morgan, President of the National Academy of Sciences; Dr. M.H. Jacobs, Director of Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and Dr. E.G. Conklin of Princeton University. He is also contributed to Volume Two of Dr. Jerome Alexander's three-volume series on Colloid Chemistry.
In 1924 Dr. Just was selected from among the biologists of the world by a group of German biologists to contribute to a monograph on fertilization. It was one in a series of monographs by specialists working on fundamental problems of the function and structure of the cell.
From 1920–1931 Dr. Just was the Julius Rosenwald Fellow in Biology of the National Research Council. Under this grant program he engaged in research as an adjunct researcher of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Berlin-Dahlam, working under Professor Max Hartmann. Dr. Just also worked at the marine biological laboratories in Naples and Sicily.
In 1930, Dr. Just lectured at the Eleventh International Congress of Zoologists, held at Padua, Italy. The lecture was entitled The Role of Cortical Cytoplasm in Vital Phenomena, which was based on the fifty published papers written by Dr. Just.
"If we are to judge his accomplishments by standards set up by men of science, it can be said that Dr. Just is an eminent scientist. If we are to judge his value to Negro education by what he has accomplished in the realm of science, it can be said that to Negro youth especially, he demonstrates the possibility of human achievement regardless of race or color. In the language of Dean Kelly Miller in an appreciation of Dr. Just, 'What boots it that Euclid was a Greek, Newton an Englishman, Marconi an Italian or Gutenberg a German? Their genius has enriched the blood of mankind regardless of place, time, race or nationality.'" George R. Arthur. "Ernest Just, Biologist", The Crisis, February 1932, p. 46.
Beginning in 1929, he engaged in an extensive amount of research in Europe, which lasted until his return to the United States in 1940. Dr. Just died from pancreatic cancer the following year, at the age of 58.
Publications
Dissertation Title: Studies of Fertilization in Platynereis megalops. University of Chicago, 1916.
The Biology of the Cell Surface Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son & Co., Inc. (1939)
Library of Congress Call Number: QH581.J8
