Alice Ball, the first woman to graduate from the University of Hawaii

Alice Augusta Ball (born July 24, 1892 – died December 31, 1916) is an American chemist. She is best known for developing one of the most effective treatments for leprosy before the 1940s. She is also the first woman and the first African American to graduate from the University of Hawaii.

Alice Augusta Ball was born on July 24, 1892 in Seattle, Washington. Her parents were  James Presley and Laura Louise (Howard) Ball. Her father is a newspaper editor, photographer, and lawyer. Her grandfather, James Presley Ball, is a famous photographer, known for being the first African-American known for his mastery of daguerreotype.

In 1903, James Ball Sr. moved with his family to Hawaii, but his death the following year caused the family to return to Seattle in 1905.

Alice Ball attended Seattle High School and graduated with honors in science in 1910. She began studying chemistry at the University of Washington. During the four years she spent there, she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Pharmacy. She co-publishes with her pharmacy professor Benzoylations in Ether Solution in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

After completing her undergraduate studies, Ball was awarded scholarships to study at the University of California at Berkeley and at the University of Hawaii. Ball decides to return to Hawaii to do a master’s degree in chemistry. In 1915, she became the first woman and the first African-American to graduate from this institution.

During her postdoctoral studies at the University of Hawaii, Alice Ball is interested in the chemical structure and active ingredient of kava.

At the same time, Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, assistant surgeon at Kalihi Hospital, asked Ball for help in developing a method to isolate the active component of chaulmoogra oil, used in particular in the treatment of leprosy. Indeed, at the time, many patients prefer to avoid using this oil in the long term because of its very strong bitter taste and side effects, including stomach upset.

Ball is developing a process for isolating the ethyl ester from the fatty acids of chaulmoogra oil so that they can be injected. However, she dies before publishing her results. Another chemist from the University of Hawaii, Arthur L. Dean, continues her work and begins large-scale production of injectable chaulmoogra extract. In 1918, a Hawaiian physician wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association that a total of 78 patients were discharged from Kalihi Hospital after receiving injection therapy.

Isolated ethyl ester remained the main treatment for leprosy until the development of sulfones in the 1940s.

Alice Augusta Ball became ill during her research and returned to Seattle in 1916 for treatment. She died on December 31, 1916 at the age of 24. In an article published the following year in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, it is assumed that the cause of the disease might be chlorine poisoning while teaching. The official cause of death remains unknown today, as the death certificate has been altered and claims that she died of tuberculosis.

She dies before having published her works that the president of Arthur L. Dean University credited himself. The treatment, engineered in the chemistry laboratory at the University of Hawaii, was known as the Dean Method after Dr. Arthur Dean, president of the university. The Dean Method, however, is not Dean’s at all. The key research behind the treatment was conducted by Alice Ball.  It was not until 1977 that a researcher rediscovered Alice Ball’s research.

On February 29, 2000, the University of Hawaii inaugurated a plaque commemorating Ball’s work, placed on a chaulmoogra tree behind Bachman Hall. On the same day, Hawaii’s former Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono declared February 29 “Alice Ball Day,” celebrated every four years.

In 2007, the Board of Trustees of the University of Hawaii awarded Ball the Medal of Distinction.