Ernest Everett Just Marine Biologist Scott # 3057  Issued February 1, 1996 in Washington D.C.  Designed by Richard Sheaff

Ernest Everett Just was born on August 14, 1883 in Charleston, South Carolina. His father died when he was four years old and he was raised by his mother, a schoolteacher who taught her children to respect education and their own intellectual abilities. 

Ernest completed the four year course of instruction at Kimball Hall Academy in just three years and then attended Dartmouth College where he graduated magna cum laude in 1907.

He accepted a position at Howard University and was appointed head of the Zoology department in 1912.  Ernest founded the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and served as the head of Howard University's Department of Physiology until his death. He received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1915. Ernest also served on the board of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Wood's Hole, Massachusetts.

Ernest spent his entire life fighting to overcome racial discrimination so that he could continue to pursue his life's work, the study of cells - the basic unit of all life. He worked with simple forms of sea life and made new discoveries concerning fertilization, cell development and the cell surface. He also made contributions in experimental parthenogenesis, hydration, cell division, dehydration in living cells, and the effect of ultra violet rays on chromosome numbers.

Ernest believed that nature's arrangement of it's elements was the key to understanding and that living things must be studied as a whole within their environments. 

Ernest received offers to work at many European laboratories including the Sorbonne and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and after 1929 Ernest spent much of each year in Europe where his work was respected and race was not an issue.

He published his first book, Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Mammals based on his work at Wood's Hole. His second book, The Biology of the Cell Surface was published while in Europe.

When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Ernest returned to the United States, where ill with cancer he passed away on October 27, 1941 in Washington D.C.

Sources: 
Encyclopedia Britannica  
Encyclopedia Africana