Who was Ernest Everett Just?
He was a developmental biologist and a pioneer who worked hard to break down barriers for black scientists in this country. His mother, a school teacher, had managed to enroll him in a prep school that sent most of its graduates to Dartmouth. Just was a stellar student there and at Dartmouth. After graduating and earning a Ph. D. at the University of Chicago, he did important research on fertilization and early development in animals, working mainly with marine invertebrates. At the time, genetics was an exciting new field in biology, and many biologists thought that embryonic development was completely controlled by the nucleus. It was Just who established the crucial role of the cytoplasm in fertilization and the early events of development. He showed that there were important signals going from the cytoplasm to the nucleus, as well as the other way around. Did he achieve recognition in his day? No, he experienced racial discrimination that eventually led him to emigrate to Europe; h
