Alice Ball

The first woman and first African American to earn a master's degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaiʻi, Ball developed the first effective treatment for leprosy. Working with Dr. Harry T. Hollmann of the Leprosy Investigation Station, she solved a problem that had stymied medicine for centuries. Chaulmoogra oil had long shown potential against the disease, but its extreme viscosity and poor absorption made it nearly impossible to administer; ingested doses caused nausea, and injectable forms caused painful lesions. Ball's solution was to chemically modify the oil's fatty acids into ethyl esters, making the compound water-soluble and suitable for injection.

This process, later called the "Ball Method," allowed the drug to be absorbed safely and efficiently into the bloodstream. By 1920, health authorities in Hawaiʻi reported that many patients treated with the Ball Method were able to return home rather than remain in lifelong quarantine. For more than two decades, it served as the worldwide standard treatment for leprosy.

Ball died unexpectedly at age 24 before she could publish her findings, and others initially took credit for her work. Later scholarship and institutional recognition restored her legacy. Though the Ball Method has since been replaced by modern multidrug therapy, it marked a pivotal transition between early botanical medicine and modern pharmaceutical chemistry, and dramatically restored dignity and hope to thousands of patients worldwide.