Pharmaceutical chemist Alice Ball (1892-1916) developed the first effective treatment for leprosy, saving thousands from exile and painful, mostly ineffective lifelong treatment & was a trailblazer for both women and black scientists. #BlackHistoryMonth ⁠
⁠ #sciart

Alice Augusta Ball (July 24, 1892 - December 31, 1916) studied chem at UWashington, earning a BSc in pharmaceutical chem & 2nd degree in pharmacy 2 years later. She published "Benzoylations in Ether Solution," in the prestigious J of the Am Chem Soc with her pharmacy instructor.

She was offered many scholarships & returned to Hawaii to pursue her MSc in chem, investigating the active principle of Piper methysticum (a medicinal plant known as kava or ʻawa). She was both 1st woman & 1st Black Master’s grad from the U of Hawai'i & 1st Black chem prof there

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From 1866 to 1942, people diagnosed with leprosy in Hawai'i were arrested & quarantined on Molokai. Physician Dr. Harry T. Hollmann of the Kalihi Hospital & acting director of the Kalihi leprosy clinic, was unsatisfied with using chaulmoogra oil in its natural form to treat

leprosy patients & wanted to isolate the active ingredients. He recruited grad student Ball to help.

Within a year, she was able to do what scientists had been unable to do for centuries: she isolated the active ingredients & converted them to a form which could be circulated

in the body. By taking the fatty acids present in the oil & exposing them to an alcohol & a catalyst, she produce ethyl esters which are soluble in water, & hence could effectively be injected. My print shows how she formed the ethyl ester of chaulmoogric acid.

This breakthrough was so significant, she was offered a university chem instructor position. By 1922, her method was widely used to prepare chaulmoogra oil, & patients who might have been subjected to exile, a life of painful injections, trapped in quarantine were discharged!⁠

Tragically, Ball did not live to see the affects of her research. She became ill during research & returned to Seattle for treatment. She may have been exposed to chlorine gas while demonstrating the use of a gas mask in case of attack (as WWI was raging),

but the cause of her death is unknown as her death certificate was altered & lists tuberculosis as the cause of death, at age 24. She had yet to publish her results when she met her untimely death.

The chemist & University of Hawaii president Arthur L. Dean completed & published her study - but he did not give Ball credit for her work, calling it the "Dean Method"! Dr. Hollmann objected & published how the technique should in fact be known as the "Ball Method".

Despite Hollmann's efforts to defend her legacy, Ball's achievements did not receive much recognition until historians highlighted her work in the 70s. Almost 90 years after her study, University of Hawaii finally recognized her work with a plaque on their lone chaulmoogra tree

in 2000, and the Lieutenant Governor declared February 29 "Alice Ball Day," now celebrated every four years.