The Chemist Who Helped Cure Leprosy

How many women scientists can you name? Maybe Marie Curie or Jane Goodall, but what about Alice Ball? No?  Well, we’ll tell you about her.  

Ball died at just age 24, but had already achieved much. She was the first African American and first woman to get a master’s degree in chemistry in 1915; the first female chemistry instructor at her college and department head, but her greatest achievement is in the treatment of leprosy.  

Ball was pursuing her master’s degree at the College of Hawaii when the islands had a spate of leprosy cases.  Dr. Harry Hollmann, at the Honolulu leprosarium, urged her to make the only treatment for leprosy more effective and tolerable.  

Injection of the Chaulmoogra tree oil (chaul·​moo·​gra) into affected skin helped ease symptoms but it was so viscous that it formed bulbous columns that wouldn’t dissolve and caused abscesses. Ms. Ball found the answer.  

 She was able to convert the fatty acids in the thick oil into ethyl esters that could be injected more easily.  The treatment was amazingly effective, but Ball died from inhaling toxic fumes in a lab accident before publishing her work.     

Her master’s degree mentor, Arthur Dean, mass produced the ethyl esters with just a minor change and named the method after himself.  But Dr. Hollmann from the leprosarium publicly objected, noting that the “tweak” by Dean was not “any improvement” of Ball’s method.   

It still took 90 years for Ball to get credit but now her name is not only on a plaque at the college, Hawaii celebrates Alice Ball Day.