Ernest Everett Just
On August 14th 1883, the zoologist, biologist, physiologist, and research scientist, Ernest Everett Just, was born into this world to Charles and Mary Matthews Just in Charleston, South Carolina. Mary Just moved her family off the peninsula after her husband Charles died in 1887 and acquired several hundred acres of land known as “The Hillsborough Plantation”. Mary Just founded the town of Maryville, one of the first purely black town governments in the state and a model for blacks throughout the United States. Sadly the two was absorbed by the city of Charleston. Ernest went to the school run by his mother and at the age of 13 he enrolled at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in the spring of 1896. Within 3 years he completed the normal course and returned to Maryville in 1899. His mother decided he should further his education and secured his enrollment at Kimball Hall Academy, New Hampshire. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1907 and received his Ph.D from the University of Chicago in experimental embryology. In 1920, Ernest was named a Julius Rosenwald Fellow in Biology of National Research Council and an adjunct researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Berlin-Dahlam, Germany. Ernest Just died on October 27th 1941.
Jacques Loeb started cell biology research in 1899 but only got so far and a decade later in 1911, Ernest started his own cell biology work. It had been at the Woods Hole laboratories when he’d made and important discovery about cell cleavage, the successive cell divisions leading to the formation of the embryo. Using sea urchins, marine worms, and sand dollars Ernest conducted experiments. Ernest proposed that the egg contained the necessary mechanism for development. As he continued with his experiments he confirmed the role of the egg cytoplasm in the initiation of cleavage.