Inventory to the Percy Lavon Julian Family Papers

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Percy Lavon Julian Family Papers
Series III: Folder 2
Julian Memorial Lecture, Bernhard Witkop
May 4, 1978

     Bernhard Witkop first became aware of the American chemist, Dr. Percy L. Julian, in 1938, when as a young man of 21 years he was a predoctoral research fellow in chemistry in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Heinrich Wieland at the University of Munich. It was upon reading a report in the 1935 Journal of the American Chemical Society wherein Percy Julian and Josef Pikl, as young researches in Minshall Laboratory at DePauw University, described the classical and spectacular total synthesis of the alkaloid, Physostigmine, that Dr. Witkop found a ready reference to his research on the deadly toxin from the poisonous mushroom Amanita phalloides, namely Phalloidin.

     The scientific exchange which then began between these two men continued and expanded with Dr. Witkop's arrival at Harvard University in 1947. This initial fellowship, encompassing their common interest in the Indole Alkaloids, Sempervirine, the Amino Acid Tryptophane, and later their pioneering work on Steroids and Steroidal Hormones, was to flower into a friendship woven together with human understanding as well as scientific inquiry. Dr. Witkop has written of this friendship: "In the treasury of letters received from Percy Julian over a time span of 30 years, the woof of chemistry and the warp of the human condition interweave to a fabric that shows Percy Julian the Scientist to be as great as, and inseparable from, Percy Julian the Humanist."

     Dr. Bernhard Witkop was born in Freiburg, Baden, Germany, on May 9, 1917. His training in chemistry was taken at the University of Munich, where he received the Diploma in 1938, the Ph.D. in 1940, and the Sc.D. in 1946. During the years 1938-1946 he was Private Assistant to Professor Heinrich Wieland. From 1945-1946 he was Professor of Chemistry at Weihenstephan Agricultural and Technical College, and from 1946-1947 he was Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Munich. He came to Harvard University as a Matthew T. Mellon Fellow in Chemistry in June, 1947, and served as an instructor and lecturer from 1948 to 1950.

     Dr. Witkop's long career with the United States Public Health Service and the National Institutes of Health began in 1950, when he was appointed a Special Fellow to the U.S. Public Health Service. With the acquisition of United States citizenship in 1953 he became a chemist in the U.S. Civil Service. Since 1956 he has been Chief Chemist, Section on Metabolites; and from 1957, Chief, Laboratory of Chemistry, National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases.

     Dr. Bernhard Witkop is one of our country's most productive chemists. His work on the isolation of natural products, reaction mechanisms, synthetic organic chemistry, and biochemistry has resulted in over 370 publications. He is a member of the the National Academy of Science, the American Chemical Society, and numerous other scientific organizations throughout the world; and he has been the recipient of scientific honors, medals, and invitational lectureships too numerous to record here. Dr. Witkop, together with his wife, Marlene Prinz Witkop, has just returned from Japan, where he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.