Just, Ernest Everett (1883-1941), an American biologist, received the first Spingarn Medal, which is awarded annually to an African American who has had outstanding achievement in his or her field. When he won the award in 1915, he was studying fertilization in marine invertebrates and the role of the cell surface in the development of such organisms. Just’s research led him to declare that all parts of a cell influence the cell’s activities. This idea differed from the traditional belief that only the nucleus of the cell controlled cell activity.
Just was born on Aug. 14, 1883, in Charleston, South Carolina. He received a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in 1907 and began teaching at Howard University the same year. He received a doctor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1916. From 1909 through 1930, Just spent almost every summer conducting research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He spent most of the last 10 years of his life working in Europe to escape racial discrimination in American laboratories. In 1939, he published two books: The Biology of the Cell Surface and Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Animals. He died on Oct. 27, 1941.
