Symposium to honor life of biologist, Feb. 23A symposium on the life and science of Dr. Ernest E. Just will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Feb. 23, and from 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Feb. 23 in the 2-West Amphitheater of the MUSC Clinical Science Building.Following a continental breakfast, registration and greeting, the symposium will feature presentations by guest lecturers on the international impact this South Carolina native had on the science of cell biology. Guest lecturers at the symposium are:
The Dr. Ernest E. Just symposium is sponsored by the Office of Diversity; Eric Lacy, Ph.D., Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy; Multicultural Graduate Student Association; South Carolina AHEC, NASA; and MU Alpha Chapter- Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. as part of Black History Month Celebration. Information regarding the symposium can be access through its Web site
Ernest Everett Just, an eminent marine biologist, was born in Charleston, S.C. Just’s father, Charles Frazier Just, and grandfather, Charles Just Sr. were dock builders. Seeking a substantial education, he attended the Industrial School of State College, Orangeburg, S.C., Kimball Academy at Meriden, New Hampshire; and Dartmouth College, graduated in 1907. Each school he attended was proud to have him because of his kindly demeanor and his unusual ability as a scholar. Accordingly each school he attended honored him. At Dartmouth he won the Phi Beta Kappa Key, the highest scholastic award to be given to a student in an undergraduate college. Just was also on the faculty of Howard University Medical School as a professor and head of the Department of Physiology. In 1915, after displaying unusual brilliancy in research, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People conferred upon him the Spingarn Medal, which each year is given to an African-American who has been most outstanding in achievement. The following year he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago. The honors that have since come to Dr. Just are too numerous to mention in our limited space; but we shall list a few of them. He did his work so well, that he was selected as guest investigator, to engage in research at the Kaiser Wilhem Institute fur Biologie. In 1919, he spent six months in Biological Research at Naples, Italy. He had also at his disposal the private laboratories of several of the crowned heads of Europe. For 20 years at least he did research worked at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass. A gift from the Rosenwald Fund of about $80,000 a year for several years made it possible for Dr. Just to be relieved of his undergraduate teaching assignment and devote all his time to research and the teaching of graduate students. Aside from this, Dr. Just was selected by leading biologists of Germany as the best fitted among world scholars to write a treatise on fertilization. Dr. Just was a member of the National Research Council, editor of the international council, editor of the international Journal, “Protoplasma.” He was a member of the American Society of Zoologists, the American Naturalists, and a corresponding member of La Societe des Science Naturelles et Mathematiques de France. 1936 Dr. Just summarized his ideas that he made through the years in a book, “The Biology of the Cell Surface,” which was published in 1939. The book explained the special significance of the outer cytoplasm, which Dr. Just called the ectoplasm. When Germany and France went to war near the end of 1939, the French government ordered all foreign scientists to leave the country. Unable to escape before Paris fell to the Germans, Dr. Just was captured and held briefly in a prisoner-of-war camp before finally being allowed to return to the United States in September 1940. Dr. Just went back to Howard, for he had nowhere else to go. Howard officials ordered him to return to teaching, but he was too ill. Dr. Just's increasingly severe digestive troubles proved to be due to cancer. Dr. Ernest Everett Just died on Oct. 27, 1941. Biography of Dr. Ernest Just
|