Alice Ball’s Contribution to Science

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Alice Ball was a notable African American born in 1892. She was an alumnus of the University of Washington where she was awarded a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912 and a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy in 1914 (Chen, 2020). Having attained her master’s in chemistry at the University of Hawaii in 1915, Alice Ball became the first woman as well as the first African American to reach that academic excellence. Upon receiving her master’s degree, she was employed at the university as a chemistry professor, thereby, making her the first chemistry professor (Li, 2020). Her notable works as a chemist have been recognized in the field of science. This paper, therefore, will explore Alice Ball’s scientific life and her contribution to science.

Alice Ball was the first person to make a cure for Hansen’s disease, which was a bacterial infection that was highly contagious and had mortifying effects on the infected. At the University of Hawaii, she did research that was aimed at identifying how effective would Chaulmoogra oil be in the treatment of Hansen’s disease (Collins, 2021). Chen (2020) asserts that to test the workability of Chaulmoogra oil, it was superficially applied on the skin, injected, and swallowed. However, Alice Ball in her experiment noted that the oil had a bad taste, injected Chaulmoogra oil was not easily absorbed in the body and was less effective when it was applied directly to the human skin (Abebe, 2021). She performed her laboratory experiments on Chaulmoogra oil when she worked for the United States of America as a chemistry professor and public health officer in 1915. It was later revealed that she had been successful in extracting ethyl ester from the Chaulmoogra oil and would use the extracts instead to treat Hansen’s disease. The method became successful as it was effective when injected and, therefore, offered therapeutic effects in the treatment of Hansen’s disease.

However, Alice Ball died the next year and could not witness the accomplishments she made. According to Li (2020), the University of Hawaii president made attempts in claiming Alice Ball’s findings as his own. His attempts became futile as Alice Ball’s former supervisor advocated for recognition of her treatment option for the Hansen’s disease. Her work was also picked by her supervisor who published her research without acknowledging her the research. However, Alice Ball’s former supervisor 1922, refuted her supervisor’s false publications and wrote a paper crediting her success in using chaulmoogra oil to treat Hansen’s disease otherwise. In the 21^st century, the Hawaii state governor recognized Alice Ball’s scientific contribution and made every February 29^th Alice Ball Day (Li, 2020). This resulted in her credits being recognized every four years in Hawaii and the Science, Technology, Enginering, and Mathematics (STEM) community.

The other contribution made by Alice Ball was in 1914 when she was co-writing an article on Benzoylations in Ether Solution. The article was published in the American Chemical Society journal in the same year (Chen, 2020). With the prevailing racial discrimination against African Americans and gender inequality when it came to women, the publishing of Alice Ball’s in the journal was a great accomplishment at the time. Therefore, Alice Ball was a chemist whose scientific life and contributions to science led to the use of isolated ethyl ester from Chaulmoogra oil in the treatment of Hansen’s disease.

References

Abebe, D. (2021). The ball method: A Short film celebrating Alice Augusta Ball. In African American chemists: Academia, Industry, and Social Entrepreneurship (pp. 41-51). American Chemical Society.

Chen, L. (2020). Black women in STEM: Alice Ball.

Collins, S. N. (2021). The importance of storytelling in chemical education.Nature chemistry, 13(1), 1-2.

Guo, L. (2022). Amplified voices: A collection of discussions from women of fisheries. Fisheries.

Li, G. (2020). Incredible treatment. New Scientist, 247(3291), 24.

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