Marker with an exposed yam used to isolate his study material
for his synthesis of progesterone. This photo is from the cover
of the Aug. 31, 1951, issue of Tiempo, a Mexican publication of Time/Life.
Photo: Juan Guzmán
The American Chemical Society and the Mexican Chemical Society will jointly honor Penn State with an International Historic Chemical Landmark during a ceremony on the University Park Campus on Oct. 1. The international landmark is only the fifth conferred by the American Chemical Society and the first to be sited on a United States university campus.
At the public ceremony, which will begin at 2:15 p.m. in the courtyard outside Pond Laboratory, the presidents of both societies will present the plaque conferring landmark status to the University. A reception will follow.
The landmark commemorates "The 'Marker Degradation' and Creation of the Mexican Steroid Hormone Industry" and honors the work of the late Russell Earl Marker, Penn State professor emeritus of organic chemistry, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth control pill. Marker taught and conducted research on steroid hormones at Penn State from 1934 to 1943.
The text of the landmark plaque states "In Pond Laboratory, Russell E. Marker achieved the first practical synthesis of the pregnancy hormone, progesterone, by what now is known as the 'Marker Degradation.' After discovering an economical source of his starting material in a species of Mexican yam, Marker commercialized his process in 1944 at Syntex, S.A., which he founded in Mexico City with Emeric Somlo and Federico A. Lehmann.
"This low-cost progesterone eventually became the preferred precursor in the industrial preparation of the anti-inflammatory drug cortisone. In 1951, Syntex researchers synthesized the first useful oral contraceptive from Marker's starting material. Syntex and its competitors in Mexico became a powerful international force in the development of steroidal pharmaceuticals."
A similar plaque will be unveiled in Mexico City, the first site of Syntex, on Dec. 2. The designation also will be celebrated by the Mexican Chemical Society at its annual convention in Monterrey, Mexico, on Oct. 19.
In his nine years at Penn State, Marker published 160 papers and developed a chemical synthetic technique that bears his name, the Marker Degradation, a process still used today in the large-scale industrial production of many steroid hormones. Just as important, Marker discovered a cheap source of his preferred starting material -- a Mexican yam.
Marker's work and the proliferation of the Mexican steroid hormone industry drastically reduced the cost of progesterone from an expensive chemical rarity to the cheapest of all steroid hormones. When his chemistry was extended to the synthesis of testosterone, estrone, estradiol, and other important steroids, these compounds also became economically available for use in medicine. By the 1950s, over half of the sex hormones sold in the United States were produced in Mexico and could be traced to Marker's process and starting material.
Although best known for his contributions to steroid chemistry, Professor Marker also developed the octane rating system for gasoline.