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Previous Volume 345:1918-1919 December 27, 2001 Number 26 Next

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By Carl Djerassi. 320 pp. New York, Oxford University Press, 2001. $22.50. ISBN 0-19-850872-7.

Carl Djerassi's illuminating scientific and autobiographical memoir begins 50 years ago, when as a steroid chemist he participated in the birth of "the Pill" in Mexico City. Djerassi is a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, as well as an author of novels, poems, and plays — particularly what he calls "science-in-fiction." He has also written about the social-welfare aspects of the Pill.

A brief, useful history of the sex steroids, delineating their biologic activity for female and male reproductive ability, prefaces the Pill's history. The breakthrough was the discovery by Russell Marker in the late 1930s and early 1940s . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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