Carl Djerassi
| Carl Djerassi | |
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Carl Djerassi in 2004
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| Born |
October 29, 1923 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | January 30, 2015 (aged 91) San Francisco, California, United States |
| Nationality | |
| Fields | Chemistry |
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| Known for | |
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Website www |
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Carl Djerassi (October 29, 1923 – January 30, 2015) was an Austrian-born Bulgarian-American chemist, novelist, and playwright best known for his contribution to the development of oral contraceptive pills.
Carl Djerassi was born in Vienna, Austria, but spent the first years of his infancy in Sofia, Bulgaria, the home of his father, Samuel Djerassi, a dermatologist and specialist in sexually transmitted diseases. His mother was Alice Friedmann, a Viennese dentist and physician. Both parents were Jewish.
Following his parents' divorce, Djerassi and his mother moved to Vienna. Until the age of 14, he attended the same realgymnasium that Sigmund Freud had attended many years earlier; he spent summers in Bulgaria with his father.
Austria refused him citizenship and after the Anschluss, his father briefly remarried his mother in 1938 to allow Carl and his mother to escape the Nazi regime and flee to Sofia, Bulgaria, where he lived with his father for a year. Bulgaria, although not immune to antisemitism, proved a safe haven, as the country managed to save its entire 48,000-strong Jewish population from deportation to Nazi concentration camps. During his time in Sofia, Djerassi attended the American College of Sofia where he became fluent in English.
In December 1939, Djerassi arrived with his mother in the United States, nearly penniless. Djerassi's mother worked in a group practice in upstate New York. In 1949, his father emigrated to the United States, practiced in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and eventually retired near his son in San Francisco.
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