Astro-obituary: Carl Djerassi

Carl Djerassi, a 91-year-old Stanford chemist who helped to develop the birth control pill, passed away from cancer Friday (Jan.30) in San Francisco. Djerassi’s scientific work led to the world’s first oral contraceptive in 1952, which gave women the option to control pregnancies. He developed a synthetic molecule called norethindrone, the effects of which simulated, in stronger form, those of progesterone. For his work, he earned an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and received the presidential National Medal of Science, which only a few hundred scientists have received since its creation.

In his book This Man’s Pill, published on the 50th anniversary of that 1951 discovery, Djerassi saw the development of the pill as an outcome of postwar technological euphoria and was convinced that it could not have happened in today’s climate. He was equally certain that without the pill there would have been no sexual revolution in the 1960s, and doubted that the impending separation of sexual behaviour and activity into “sex for recreation and pleasure” and “sex for procreation” would have happened.

Carl Djerassi was born on 29 October 1923 [1] so that his natal Sun [5sc] is  not only contained by Venus [17sc48] and Saturn [24li30] but also conjunct the Venus-Saturn midpoint [6sc] . About this midpoint Ebertin gives us the following information:

Inhibitions in love life; self-control; restrictions in expression of sex-urge. Malfunctioning of the internal glandular secretions.

We know that birth control pills contain hormones that prevent ovulation and thereby  help stop pregnancy so that the Ebertin’s keyphrases for Venus-Saturn  reflect perfectly Djerassi’s achievement.

Djerassi died on Jan.30. Very appropriately, the most significant aspect on that day was an exact Venus-Saturn square at 08:23 UT. It was also  in the Last Quarter Moon phase of Jan.26. Notice that the Sun [6aq] and Moon [6ta] form a T-square with Djerassi’s natal Sun [5sc].    A chart drawn for this Moon phase at  San Francisco is shown here. It has the Sun in the 5^th house square Moon in the 8^th house.  This square speaks of a crisis of  how to choose  between  “sex (8^th)  for recreation and pleasure (5^th) ” and “sex (8^th)  for procreation (5^th)” which Djerassi’s pill actually helped solve.

[1] http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Djerassi,_Carl