Ernest Everett Just
Cell biologist who argued that life happens at the cell surface
At a glance
- Inventor
- Ernest Everett Just
- Life
- 1883–1941
- Birthplace
- Charleston, South Carolina
- Country
- United States / Europe
- Region
- United States
- Era
- 1900–1950
- Fields
- Science & Engineering, Medicine & Health
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 0 in this archive
What they did
Just's experimental work on marine egg cells — fertilisation, cell division, the behaviour of the ectoplasm — challenged the prevailing view that the nucleus alone governed development.
Historical context
Working summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole and teaching at Howard University, he published more than seventy papers and two books.
Obstacles
Barred from research appointments at white American universities, he moved his laboratory life to Europe in the 1930s, working in Naples, Berlin and Paris until the German invasion of France forced his return.
The legacy
The Biology of the Cell Surface (1939) anticipated later research on the membrane's role in development. He received the first Spingarn Medal in 1915.
The evidence
Ernest Everett Just papers
Institutional recordBlack Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just
Scholarship
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 0
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.