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| Photograph of E. E. Just, circa 1936. |
November 21, 2008 Carnegie Building, Conference Room A, Howard University, Washington, DC 8:00 a.m.
until 7:00 p.m.
| W. Malcolm Byrnes Howard
University Washington, DC 20059 wbyrnes@howard.edu 202-806-9749 | Stuart A. Newman New York Medical College Valhalla,
NY 10595 newman@nymc.edu 914-594-4048 |
A message from
the local organizer:
All indications are that the symposium was a rousing success.
Eighty-four people attended (see List of Participants); they came from Howard, as well as from universities and federal agencies
in the area, and included PhD-level scientists, students, and laypersons. The talks were all excellent; each did
great justice to the legacy of E. E. Just. Under the editorial leadership of Dr. Gary Wessel of Brown University, many of
the speakers have agreed to publish their talks as papers in a special issue of the journal Molecular Reproduction and
Development. Other scholars and scientists also have agreed to contribute to this special issue. Please keep an eye
out for it.
Thanks are due to the National Science Foundation for funding the symposium, and to Howard University
Graduate School for funding the expansion of the luncheon so that more people could attend. Special thanks go to Dr. Gwendolyn
Bethea and Ms. Diane Peoples in the graduate school for their help in making the symposium a success. Finally, a heartfelt
thank you goes to the speakers who in many cases traveled long distances to honor E. E. Just on Howard's campus,
to the moderators who insured that the day went smoothly, and to the participants who came from throughout the area to attend
this special event.
This website now contains comments from symposium participants,
photographs from the luncheon, and a video recording of Dr. Kenneth Manning's memorable luncheon keynote talk about his
experiences writing Black Apollo of Science, the biography of Just, and his thoughts on African Americans in science.
For these, see the page titled "Comments, Photos and Video."
W. Malcolm Byrnes Howard University February 23, 2009
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Symposium Overview
Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941) was an African American biologist of international standing who studied fertilization
and development in marine invertebrates. Perhaps best known for his discovery of the wave of negativity that sweeps over the
egg upon fertilization, E. E. Just also was the first to associate cell surface changes with stages of embryonic development.
He was deeply familiar with the natural history of the marine animals whose eggs he studied. His knowledge of natural settings
led him to emphasize the importance of using laboratory conditions that closely match those in nature. Regarded
around the world as an expert in the handling of marine invertebrate eggs and embryos, Just devised a set of “indices
of development” that allowed him to predict with a high degree of certainty whether or not a particular fertilized egg
would develop normally. Based on his more than thirty years of work, he came to believe that it was the cell surface and the
structured layer below it, the ectoplasm, that played the most critical roles in development, and in heredity and evolution.
He promoted a holistic view of cells and organisms in opposition to the gene-centric view that was becoming more prevalent
with the rise of genetics. Just’s incisive critique of genetic reductionism finds echoes in contemporary multiscale,
systems approaches in biology. He also speculated on the relationship between developmental and evolutionary mechanisms in
a manner that resonates with contemporary evolutionary-developmental biology. This symposium sought to draw attention
to Ernest E. Just and his contributions to biology by bringing together a group of distinguished scientists from areas of
research in cell and developmental biology and ecology that all relate in some way to Just and his work. The timing and location
of the symposium were significant: the year 2008 is the 125th anniversary of Just’s birth, and Just was a
faculty member at Howard University throughout his scientific career.
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