Ernest Everett Just

Ernest Everett Just was born on August 14, 1883 in Charleston, South Carolina. Feeling that schools for melaninites in the south were inferior, Just and his mother thought it better for him to go north. At the age of sixteen, Just enrolled at a Meriden, New Hampshire college-preparatory high school, Kimball Union Academy. Just graduated in 1903 with the highest grades in his class. He later graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College. He won special honors in zoology and was also honored as a Rufus Choate scholar for two years. Just made pioneering contributions to the cytology and embryology of marine organisms, and in 1925 demonstrated the carcinogenic effects of ultraviolet radiation on cells. He also authored two books, Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Mammals (1922) and The Biology of the Cell Surface (1939), and he also published several scientific papers relating to cell cytoplasm.  In the fall of 1941, Just was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died shortly there after.