Born on July 24, 1982, Alice Augusta Ball was an American chemist who discovered ‘Ball Theory’, which was the most effective method of treating leprosy during the early 20th century. She was the third of four children, with a younger sister and two older brothers.
Her father worked as a newspaper editor and her mother was a photographer, while her grandfather was a photographer as well. Her parents’ and grandfather’s love for photography played a major role in her love for chemistry, as they worked with iodine-sensitive plates and mercury vapours to develop photographs.
Alice went to study chemistry at the University of Washington, from where she earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912. Thereafter, she did her master’s in chemistry from the University of Hawaii, making her the first African American and the first woman to receive this distinction from the university.
Her master’s thesis titled, ‘The Chemical Constituents of Piper methysticum; or The Chemical Constituents of the Active Principle of the Ava Root’, included the study of the chemical properties of the Kava plant species, which was widely used in the treatment of headaches, anxiety, kidney disorders and other hyperactive illnesses.
Owing to her research and knowledge of the chemical makeup of plants, she was approached by Harry Hollmann, who was an Acting Assistant Surgeon at the Leprosy Investigation Station of the US Public Health Service in Hawaii, to study chaulmoogra oil and its chemical properties. While the oil remained the best treatment available for leprosy for hundreds of years, Alice developed a more effective injectable form.
However, she was unable to publish her findings because of her untimely death in 1916. Subsequently, Arthur L Dean, Alice’s graduate study advisor and a chemist undertook further trials, and by 1919, a chemistry laboratory was producing large quantities of the chaulmoogra extract.
He later published details of the work and the findings, but did not acknowledge Alice Ball as the originator or give credit to her for the work. Her name is nowhere published in any of Dean’s work on chaulmoogra oil. The extract was best known as the ‘Dean method’, even though the idea belonged to Alice.