Written by | Yan Xiaoxu
Hungary-born chemist George Rosenkranz died June 23 at his home in Atherton, California, at the age of 102. The contraceptive pill he invented gave women the initiative to control their births, and also changed the pattern of "sexual politics" between men and women. His son, Roberto Rosenkranz, confirmed his father's death and said they did not yet know the exact cause of death.
Chemist George Rosenkranz
Dr. Rosenkranz was born in Budapest on 20 August 1916 to the son of a dance studio and a housewife to his mother. He spent a wealthy, happy childhood in Hungary before moving to Zurich to study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology under Leopold Ruzicka. Dr. Rosenkrands received his degree in chemical engineering in 1938 and his doctorate in technical sciences in 1940.
Rosenklands' son said Dr. Rosenkranz was awarded a professorship in Quito, Ecuador, amid the smoke of World War II. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 led Dr. Rosenklands to Havana. Here he met and married Edith Stan, a Jewish refugee from Austria. After his marriage, Dr. Rosenklands found a job at a Cuban pharmaceutical company where he made small amounts of progesterone and testosterone hormones from Mexico-made sand ginseng roots.
This work has piqued the interest of Syntex. Dr. Rosenklands recalls that when he came to Syntex, he didn't have any guidance on the contraceptive production process, but he started from the first step and continued his research based on his previous findings, and studied the main ingredients in the contraceptive pill. Other innovations of Dr. Rosenklands include the manufacture of naproxen, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug used in arthritis and other diseases.
Dr. Rosenklands demonstrates the contraceptive pill making process
Dr. Rosenklands is an active advocate for the introduction of the contraceptive pill, which is used by millions of women in the United States. The first oral contraceptive pill he invented was approved in 1960 and has since been popularized around the world. He once said: "This drug is not the result of accidental discovery. On the contrary, it is the result of many events strung together, which are inseparable from the credit of scientific research partners and teams. ”
In late 1951, Dr. Rosenklands and two of his colleagues, the Austrian-born scientist Carl Djerassi and the Mexican doctoral student Luis E. Miramontes, made norethindrones (progesterone drugs for contraceptives, menopausal hormone therapy, and gynecological diseases). The drug can be used in low and high dose preparations, used and formulated alone and in combination with estrogen).
Initially, norethindrone was a drug to prevent miscarriage in women, but later it became the most dominant active ingredient in the contraceptive pill. In 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the isotynolone Enovid produced by Searle Pharmaceuticals. It was a watershed in the feminist movement and the cultural war — allowing women to enjoy sex without fear of pregnancy, allowing women to have a say in when and whether to start a family. The massive promotion of the pill has sparked an enduring debate about sexual values.
In addition to being an excellent chemist, Dr. Rosenklands is also an excellent bridge player. He wrote more than a dozen books on bridge games and was inducted into the American Bridge League Celebrities in 2000. In 1984, while he and his wife were competing in a bridge tournament in Washington, his wife, Edith Rosenkranz, was kidnapped at gunpoint in a hotel garage and held for nearly two days, demanding a $1 million ransom. The kidnappers released her near the shopping mall after receiving the ransom, and the gangsters were eventually caught by the police. Ricardo Rosenkranz said in an interview after her mother's release that she must have gone through terrible hardships. His mother replied that such a terrible thing was nothing compared to experiencing the Holocaust, and that previous disasters had taught both of them that life required "courage."
In 2001, Dr. Rosenklands, at the University of Mexico, was recognized for his scientific achievements, saying: "I leave any debate about the value of contraceptives to others, but we must never forget that original research is the lifeblood of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and that interdisciplinary team efforts are indispensable to the development of major research."
The pill changed women's sexual rights
The pill has changed the role of women for half a century and changed the modern view of women's family and career choices. As soon as the contraceptive pill was introduced, it caused a social shock. One American woman excitedly said it was the first year she had not conceived in eight years of marriage. Before the invention of the contraceptive pill, although condoms could also prevent women from getting pregnant, the right to use condoms was more in the hands of men. Therefore, there are still women who still endure the results of constant pregnancy. The birth of the contraceptive pill has given women more choices and allowed women to better enjoy sex. The pill made women at the time 2-3 percentage points less likely to marry early.
In terms of career development, the pill increased the percentage of women who chose to become working women at the time by nearly 2 percentage points. The popularity of contraceptives has brought two effects on women's career choices: on the one hand, contraceptives make young people free from abstinence, and the cost of delaying marriage and pursuing careers is reduced; on the other hand, contraceptives make more women postpone marriage, forming a more "thick" late marriage market. The overall prevalence of contraceptives has reduced divorce rates and improved the quality of marriages.
Some scholars have pointed out that the contraceptive pill cannot stop the spread of AIDS, and there may be some side effects for women. In short, after the birth control pill was introduced, the debate has not stopped. But we can never deny the contribution of the contraceptive pill invented by Dr. Rosenklands to advance women's emancipation.
Author: Yan Xiaoxu
Editor: Dong Muzi Proofreader: Xue Jingning