Ernest Everett Just
Ernest Everett Just (1883–1941) was a biologist, academic, and science writer who recognized the fundamental role of the cell surface in the development of organisms.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Just was educated at Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina (later South Carolina State University), Dartmouth College (B.S., magna cum laude, 1907, Phi Beta Kappa), and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. in zoology and physiology, 1916). In 1907, he began teaching at Howard University and was put in charge of a newly formed biology department in 1910. In 1912, he became head of the new Department of Zoology, a position he held until his death in 1941. At Chicago, he met Frank R. Lillie (elected to the Academy in 1933), who served as director of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Lillie invited Just to MBL as a research assistant, the first African American to study and work there. Focusing on embryology and questions of fertilization, Just examined the egg cells of sea urchins (Arbacia) and marine worms (Nereis) and the problems of cell cleavage, which led to his first publication in 1912. Just’s widely cited article showed that the entry point of the sperm determines the first cleavage plane, becoming the definitive study on the cell cleavage of marine eggs.
Although he gained international recognition as a scientist, he was unable to secure a position at any major institution because he was Black. Just therefore sought additional research opportunities abroad, traveling to the Stazione Zoologica in Italy, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, the Sorbonne in Paris, and the Station Biologique in Roscoff, France. During his time at MBL, he became known as “a genius in the design of experiments.” He published many of his widely respected methods for handling eggs and embryos in the MBL journal, The Biological Bulletin. His most notable contributions included his work on the fertilization reaction and on Lillie’s theory of fertilization, experimental parthenogenesis, marine invertebrate reproduction, and the egg cell reactions that prevent more than one sperm from entering (fast and slow blocks to polyspermy).
Just published more than seventy scientific articles, became the editor of the journal Physiological Zoology in 1929, was elected to the editorial board of The Biological Bulletin, and was elected vice president of the American Society of Zoologists in 1930. His 1939 book The Biology of the Cell Surface synthesized his discoveries, making scientific concepts accessible to general readers and influencing scientists around the world. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded Just the first-ever NAACP Spingarn Medal in 1915. Since 2000, the Medical University of South Carolina has hosted an annual Ernest E. Just Symposium to encourage students of color to pursue careers in biomedical sciences and health professions. Since 1994, the American Society for Cell Biology has presented an award and hosted a lecture in Just’s name.