Volume 30, Number 18 · November 24, 1983
Thwarted Genius
By Stephen Jay Gould
Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just
by Kenneth R. Manning
Oxford University Press, 397 pp., $29.95
Like so many other American biologists, I have spent several summers working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole; and my affection for the place runs deep. During my first summer there, I would often wander about very late at night (or early in the morning, since the library is open twenty-four hours a day, and the joy of research easily fuses night with coming day). I would study the numerous plaques, medals, and photographs hanging here and there, dedicated to the great scientists who had worked at Woods Hole. One particularly caught my attention, a photo hanging in the main reading room, labeled Ernest Everett Just. The man it depicted was singularly handsome, with a pervasive look of sadness that touched me across half a century. It differed from all others in a way that shouldn't matter but always has in America—E.E. Just was black. I became fascinated with the man, read all I could by and about him, realized how interesting and ambiguous a story his life and work had been, and have wondered ever since why nobody had written his biography.
Review, 3536 words
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