# Alice Ball

Alice Augusta Ball (July 24, 1892 – December 31, 1916) was an African American chemist who developed the "Ball Method" for making ethyl ester derivatives of chaulmoogra oil, which were used as a treatment for leprosy during the early 20th century. She was the first woman and first African American to receive a master's degree from the University of Hawaiʻi and was also the university's first female and African-American chemistry professor. She died at the age of 24 and her contributions to science were not recognized until many years after her death.

## Early life and education

Alice Augusta Ball was born on July 24, 1892, in Seattle, Washington, to James Presley Ball and Laura Louise (Howard) Ball. She was the third of four children, with two older brothers, William and Robert, and a younger sister, Addie. Her family was middle-class and well-off, as Ball's father was a newspaper editor of The Colored Citizen, photographer, and lawyer. Her mother also worked as a photographer. Her grandfather, James Ball Sr., was a photographer, and one of the first Black Americans to make use of daguerreotype, the process of printing photographs onto metal plates. Some researchers have suggested that her parents and grandfather's love for photography may have played a role in her love for chemistry, as they worked with mercury vapors and iodine-sensitized silver plates to develop photos. Despite being prominent members and advocates of the African-American community, both of Ball's parents are listed as "White" on her birth certificate. This may have been an attempt to reduce the prejudice and racism their daughter would face and help her "pass" in white society.
Alice Ball and her family moved from Seattle to Honolulu in 1902, where she attended Central Grammar School (formerly and once again called Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani Middle School). Her family moved to Hawaii with the hopes that the warmer weather would ease her grandfather's arthritis, though he died shortly after the move. In 1905 they relocated back to Seattle after only three years in Hawaii. After returning to Seattle, Ball attended Seattle High School, where she was an active participant in her school's drama club and was known for her quick wit and ambitious personality. She graduated from this school in 1910, receiving top grades in the sciences.
Ball went on to study chemistry at the University of Washington, earning a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912, and a second bachelor's degree in the science of pharmacy two years later in 1914. Alongside her pharmacy instructor, Williams Dehn, she co-published a 10-page article, "Benzoylations in Ether Solution", in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1914. Publishing an article in a respected scientific journal was an uncommon accomplishment for a woman, especially for a Black woman at this time.
After graduating, Ball was offered many scholarships. She received an offer from the University of California Berkeley, as well as the College of Hawaii (now the University of Hawaiʻi), where she decided to study for a master's degree in chemistry. At the College of Hawaii, her master's thesis, titled "The Chemical Constituents of Piper methysticum; or The Chemical Constituents of the Active Principle of the Ava Root" involved studying the chemical properties of the Kava plant species (Piper methysticum). Endemic to Oceania and common throughout Polynesia, this plant was used in the treatment of anxiety, headaches, kidney disorders, and other hyperactive illnesses. Because of this research and her understanding of the chemical makeup of plants, she was later approached by Harry T. Hollmann, who was an Acting Assistant Surgeon at the Leprosy Investigation Station of the U. S. Public Health Service in Hawaii, to study chaulmoogra oil and its chemical properties. Chaulmoogra oil had been the best treatment available for leprosy for hundreds of years, and Ball developed a much more effective injectable form. In 1915 she became the first woman and first Black American to graduate with a master's degree from the College of Hawaii. She was also the first African-American "research chemist and instructor" in the College of Hawaii's chemistry department.

## Treatment for leprosy

At the University of Hawaiʻi, Ball investigated the chemical makeup and active principle of Piper methysticum (kava) for her master's thesis. Because of this work, she was contacted by Dr. Harry T. Hollmann at Kalihi Hospital in Hawaii, who needed an assistant for his research into the treatment of leprosy.
At the time, leprosy, or Hansen's Disease, was a highly stigmatized disease with virtually no chance of recovery. Over the course of 103 years, starting in 1866 until 1969, over 8,000 patients diagnosed with leprosy were exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai on the Kalaupapa peninsula, with the expectation that they would die there. Most of these people were Native Hawaiians, while the Haole people were allowed to leave the islands and pursue more extensive treatment on the mainland. Since they lacked an acquired immunity, the native population was especially susceptible to leprosy, with the first case appearing in 1835. The best treatment available was chaulmoogra oil, from the seeds of the Hydnocarpus wightianus tree from the Indian subcontinent, which had been used medicinally from as early as the 1300s. But Western treatment developed by British physician Frederic John Moaut in 1854 was not very effective, and every method of application had problems. It was too sticky to be effectively used topically, and as an injection the oil's viscous consistency caused it to clump under the skin and form blisters rather than being absorbed. These blisters formed in perfect rows and made it look "as if the patient's skin had been replaced by bubble wrap". Ingesting the oil was not effective either because it had an acrid taste that often induced vomiting.
At age 23, Ball developed a technique to make the oil injectable and water-soluble. Her technique involved saponifying fatty acids to form chaulmoogric acid, transforming the acid into its ethyl ester, producing a substance that retains the oil's therapeutic properties while being more stable in an aqueous suspension. Ball was unable to publish her revolutionary findings before her untimely death in 1916. Arthur L. Dean, a chemist and Ball's graduate study advisor, dean of the college, and later president of the university, was privy to details of the process she developed. After Ball's death, Dean undertook further trials and by 1919, a college chemistry laboratory was producing large quantities of the injectable chaulmoogra extract. Dean published details of the work and the findings without acknowledging Ball as the originator or crediting her work. Her name is not mentioned in any of Dean's published works on the chaulmoogra extract, while the name "the Dean method" is appended to the technique. A University of Hawai'i academic, Paul Wermager, in 2004, quoted a 1921 newspaper interview with Dean, in which he emphasized the importance of the work of his predecessors in the development of the extract. Despite this, according to Wermager, the Paradise of the Pacific report goes on to mention Hollmann and other colleagues, but not Ball.$^{:174}$
In 1920, a Hawaii physician reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that 78 patients had been discharged from Kalihi Hospital by the board of health examiners after treatment with injections of Ball's modified chaulmoogra oil. In Ball's Method, ethyl esters of the fatty acids found in chaulmoogra oil were prepared into a form suitable for injection and absorption into the circulation. While not curative or able to fully halt the disease's progress indefinitely, the isolated ethyl ester remained the only available, effective treatment for leprosy until sulfonamide drugs were developed in the 1940s.
Ball's colleague Hollmann attempted to correct the mistaken impression of the extract's development. He published a paper in 1922 giving credit to Ball, calling the injectable form of the oil the "Ball method" throughout the article. Hollmann discusses techniques developed elsewhere and reports progress in related leprosy treatments. Although Dean had contended that his later work was a refinement of Ball's method, producing an "advanced specific", Hollmann compares Dean's and Ball's techniques in the article, in a section titled "Ball's Method of Making Ethyl Esters of the Fatty Acids of Chaulmoogra Oil", and rejects this. He describes Dean's method and writes of it:
   I cannot see that there is any improvement whatsoever over the original technic as worked out by Miss Ball. The original method will allow any physician in any asylum for lepers in the world, with a little study, to isolate and use the ethyl esters of chaulmoogra fatty acids in treating his cases, while the complicated distillation in vacuo will require very delicate, and not always obtainable, apparatus.
Ball nevertheless remained largely forgotten in the scientific record. In the 1970s, Kathryn Takara and Stanley Ali, professors at the University of Hawaiʻi, found records of Ball's research and made efforts to ensure her achievement was recognized. In the 1990s, Ali came across The Samaritans of Molokai, a 1932 book that specifically mentioned and recognized the contributions of a young chemist, later identified as Ball.

## Death and recognition

Ball died on December 31, 1916, at age 24. She had become ill during her research and returned to Seattle for treatment a few months before her death. A 1917 Pacific Commercial Advertiser article suggested that the cause may have been chlorine poisoning due to exposure while teaching in the laboratory. It was reported that she was giving a demonstration on how to properly use a gas mask in preparation for an attack, as World War I was raging in Europe. However, the cause of her death is unknown, as her original death certificate was altered to cite tuberculosis.
The first recognition of Ball's work came six years after her death when, in 1922, she was mentioned in Harry T. Hollmann's article (described above), with her method being called the "Ball Method". After the work of many historians at the University of Hawaiʻi including Kathryn Takara and Stanley Ali, the University of Hawaiʻi honored Ball in 2000 by dedicating a plaque to her on the school's only chaulmoogra tree behind Bachman Hall. In 2007, the University Board of Regents honored Ball with a Medal of Distinction, the school's highest honor.
In March 2016, Hawaiʻi Magazine placed Ball on its list of the most influential women in Hawaiian history. Paul Wermager established a scholarship, in 2017, called the "Alice Augusta Ball endowed scholarship" for students pursuing degrees in chemistry, biology, biochemistry, or microbiology. In 2018, a new park in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood was named after Ball. In 2019, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine added her name to the frieze atop its main building, along with Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie, in recognition of their contributions to science and global health research.
In February 2020, a short film, The Ball Method premiered at the Pan African Film Festival. University of Hawaiʻi students have asked whether more should be done to resolve the wrongful actions of former President Dean, including proposals to rename Dean Hall after Ball instead. On November 6, 2020, a satellite named after her (ÑuSat 9 or "Alice", COSPAR 2020-079A) was launched into space. As of 2022, the student government at the university is also making strides to rename the earth sciences building "Alice Ball Hall", changing it from Dean Hall.
On February 28, 2022, Hawaii Governor David Ige signed a proclamation declaring February 28 "Alice Augusta Ball Day" in Hawaii at a special recognition ceremony on the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa campus. The ceremony took place next to Bachman Hall in the shade of a chaulmoogra tree planted in Ball's honor. More than 100 people attended, including First Lady Dawn Ige and UH President David Lassner. In December 2024, after a resolution by the UH Mānoa Faculty Senate, a bust sculpture of Ball was placed in the Hamilton Library.