Wayne State University, Department of Chemistry

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The chemistry department traces back to 1917, when Detroit Junior College hired three founding faculty members to teach it; within a decade the school had grown into the College of the City of Detroit and the department was already offering a full four-year chemistry degree. Its most famous professor arrived decades later: Carl Djerassi joined the faculty in 1952 and taught chemistry at what was now Wayne University for seven years. During part of that time, on leave to the pharmaceutical company Syntex starting in 1957, Djerassi led the team that first synthesized a steroid that became the active ingredient in the first oral contraceptive pill, a discovery that changed reproductive medicine worldwide. He left Wayne State for Stanford University in 1959, but the Detroit chemistry department he taught in later grew into one of the university's strongest research programs, now housed in its own building on Cass Avenue.

1. Department founded in 1917 at what became Wayne State University
2. Carl Djerassi taught chemistry here from 1952 to 1959
3. Djerassi co-invented the steroid behind the first birth control pill during this period
4. Today one of Wayne State's strongest PhD research departments