Carl Djerassi, father of the pill, dies aged 91

He was born in Vienna, Austria, and lived his early life in Bulgaria, his father’s home country.

But he and his mother, Alice, returned to Vienna so that he could attend the Viennese Realgymnasium, the same school attended by Sigmund Freud.

When the Nazis occupied the country following the Anschluss with Germany in 1938, he and mother fled, arriving in the US the following year.

His father Samuel Djerassi did not make the journey until 1949.

In later life he developed a career as a playwright, using London as his base for writing.

In a 2005 interview with the JC, the man who had been awarded 17 honorary doctorates and America’s National Medal of Science, claimed, modestly: “If I hadn’t invented the pill, then someone else would have.”