In this interview, Thomas Wartik, dean emeritus of the Penn State Eberly College of Science and professor emeritus of chemistry, reminisces about the adventurous and unconventional life and career of his colleague and friend, Russell Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry. Marker's pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies. In 1944, after Marker had successfully synthesized progesterone from a little-known Mexican plant, he founded the Mexico City-based Syntex -- a pharmaceutical company dedicated to hormone research and the manufacture of therapeutic steroids. In 1951, Carl Djerassi, Syntex's associate director of chemical research, developed norethindrone, a synthetic form of progesterone that became the key ingredient in the first the birth control pill.
How did you first meet Russell Marker?
Wartik: When I came to Penn State in 1950, Russell Marker was no longer here, but I kept hearing stories about him. He was said to have had a green thumb in organic chemistry. He could make any organic reaction work, even when others had tried and failed. After I became dean of the College of Science in the early 1970s, an interesting thing happened. My assistant came into my office and said there was a fellow from the BBC who wanted to do some shots in a laboratory. I went out into the corridor to see what was going on and the cameraman told me there was a "Mr. Walker" whom he wanted to photograph. I then saw a little fellow standing in a dark corner. I had been mistaken in the pronunciation; it was a Mr. Marker and not a Mr. Walker. It was his first time on campus since he left Penn State in 1943. That was my first meeting with him and we became close friends.
How did Russell Marker become interested in organic chemistry?
Wartik: His story is a really interesting one. He grew up on a farm not far from Hagerstown, Maryland, and his father wanted him to be a farmer, as well. But it turned out he really had no great interest in farming so, after he finished high school, he persuaded his father to send him to the University of Maryland. When he finished his baccalaureate degree, he wanted to learn more about chemistry so he went into a graduate program. He earned a master's degree and then completed his work for the doctoral degree. In order to be awarded the degree, he had to pass a course in physical chemistry. Russell wasn't interested in physical chemistry. He was only interested in organic chemistry, so he never took that course in physical chemistry and was never awarded a doctorate in that branch of chemistry. He then left with only a master's degree from Maryland.
Where did Russell Marker work before coming to Penn State?
Wartik: He had several jobs. He worked at the Naval Powder Factory near Washington D.C. and maybe a couple of other short-time jobs. Later, he worked at the Ethyl Corporation -- a really small outfit in a garage somewhere. They were trying to develop substances that would reduce the knock of gasoline in gasoline engines. Back then, gasoline engines in automobiles were very noisy. So they were trying to add certain compounds to the gasoline that would result in less knock. He found that he could prepare isomers of hydrocarbons, octanes, and so on. When you use normal octane that is eight carbons in a row, engines knock very loudly; in fact, the engines can even blow up. So he developed what is now known as the octane rating for gasoline.
How did Russell Marker end up at Penn State?
Wartik: First, he spent some time at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City. He went there and they paid him what at that time was a fairly handsome salary -- something like $4,000 a year. He wanted to work on hormone chemistry, but at Rockefeller they were really not that interested in pursuing that branch of chemistry. So that's when Russell remembered that Frank Whitmore, Dean of the School of Chemistry and Physics at Penn State, had once offered him a job. Russell didn't have a doctoral degree, so Whitmore offered him a research assistant appointment at the princely salary of $1800 a year. Of course, he had been making $4,000 a year, so this didn't go over well with Russell's wife. But in 1934, he came here anyway. He was assigned a place on the third floor of Osmond Lab in Whitmore's organic lab and started working right away. Although he had no doctoral degree, he supervised and mentored graduate students.
How did Russell Marker begin his work on hormones and hormone therapy?
Wartik: He conceived the idea that he might be able to make progesterone through plant materials using a compound called diosgenin. He tried to persuade a company called Parke Davis to fund his efforts, but to no avail. They said they were going to rely on bull's urine to make progesterone. Progesterone at that time was selling for far more than gold. It was selling for $800 per gram, while gold was selling for $35 per ounce.
Later, Russell heard that a retired botanist at Texas A&M was familiar with plants that might be good sources of diosgenin, so he went down to Texas A&M to talk to him. The botanist showed him an old botany book with a description of Cabeza de negro -- a plant with large concentrations of diosgenin -- found in a remote part of Mexico. So Russell went down to Mexico and went to the American consulate. This was the early 1940s, when World War II had already started but the United States was not yet an active participant. Mexico had ties to Germany, so the American consulate advised him to go home.
Still, Russell persisted. He didn't go home; he managed to find a bus that was going to pass the location he had seen in the botany book describing the plant. When the bus arrived at the area Russell recognized from the pictures, he got off and eventually found a general store. He described the plant to the owner, who, by the next day, had found him two big plants, the roots bigger than basketballs. When the bus came by going in the other direction, Russell got on it and the driver wouldn't let him bring the large roots into the bus. Instead, the driver made him tie them to the top of the bus. When it came to a stop, Russell got out to check the roots and they were gone. So he convinced a policeman to help him recover the roots. The policeman only recovered one of the roots, for which Russell paid him about him $5. He brought that one root back to Penn State. After a long, many-step chemical process using the root, Russell managed to make more progesterone than had ever been made anywhere.
How did Russell Marker found Syntex, the company that would eventually synthesize norethindrone, the key ingredient in the birth-control pill?
Wartik: I guess Russell told Parke Davis about how he'd synthesized progesterone from the plant and they wouldn't believe it. They still said they were going to use bull's urine, and Whitmore apparently wasn't interested in having progesterone made in the lab here at Penn State. Still, there was nothing that could stop Russell. After he resigned from Penn State in 1943, he went back to Mexico to continue his work with the root. There, Russell and some of the other scientists started a company and called it Syntex -- a combination of "synthesis" and "Mexico." They started making progesterone in huge quantities.
Of course, at that time, no one had conceived the idea of using hormones as a contraceptive yet. As a matter of fact, early on there had been claims that progesterone could be used as a fertility agent rather than a contraceptive. But Russell knew, in any case, that there would be a huge market for it. He eventually broke with Syntex and started another company --Botanicamex. I think one of his old partners at Syntex did his best to thwart Russell's effort to start a business. He even threatened to have Russell arrested on some grounds that he was living in Mexico illegally. Eventually Russell had to sell his company to a company called Organon of Holland. Incidentally, progesterone is no longer made from cabeza de negro. It's made from another plant called barbasco, which has an even higher concentration of diosgenin.
What else did Russell Marker do during his time in Mexico?
Wartik: When he was in Mexico City, he happened upon a leather shop. The grandfather of the shopkeeper turned out to have worked for Faberge in Russia, and was a very skilled craftsman. He showed Russell some books of the craftsmanship of various gold and silver workers and he allowed Russell to take some of these books to his hotel room and look at them. Russell then conceived the idea of making reproductions of silver that had been done by a couple of French silversmiths. Again, once an idea grabbed hold of Russell's brain, it couldn't get out of that brain. So, when he returned the books, he asked the people in that shop if they could tell him who was the best silversmith in Mexico. They gave him the name of a silversmith, and he took a silver object to that silversmith and asked for it to be reproduced. He didn't like the first reproduction, nor did he like the second one. So he asked the guy to keep working on it. Finally, the silversmith made an example that Russell approved of. Russell then had to find originals or pictures of originals for the silversmith to make more reproductions, so Russell went to Europe. He went to museums in France and Portugal and Spain and found pictures of silver objects, and brought them back to his silversmith and had reproductions made. Still, he was pretty finicky. There were a few reproductions that were up to his standards that he kept for himself. However, many of the reproductions weren't quite up to his standards. He took those to that leather shop, which sold them. When President Nixon went to Mexico, the official Mexican gift to him was one of the rejected silver wine coolers. John Wayne also went into the store and bought one of the wine coolers that Russell had rejected as not good enough.
Finally, Russell came to me one day and said he would like to contribute to the Penn State museum the reproductions he had kept. But the Penn State museum rejected them. They said they did not want copies of anything. The Philadelphia museum looked at three of them and assessed them at $450,000. In the end, he gave them to his sons. Our museum was crazy to have rejected those.
During his time in Mexico, Russell also became interested in enamels. One Sunday he went to a sort of flea market in Mexico City and he saw some painted enamels. These were all of a religious nature, and for that reason, they were of no interest to him. Still, he really admired the artistry so he asked the native man selling them if he would be willing to produce some on commission and the man agreed. The next week Russell went back with color pictures of some cave scenes, archaeological scenes, cave paintings, and other scenes. Russell was so happy with the enamels the man made that he returned many times to the market for more commissioned works. This venture made money not only for Russell, but for the native man. In fact, the artist was invited to Japan for his own exhibition.
What other stories about Russell Marker do you remember?
Wartik: In the 1930s, Russell had heard about a German professor named Butenand who had done really important hormone work. Butenand later won the Nobel Prize in 1939 for his work on sex hormones. Russell decided to go to Germany to meet him. After he got to Berlin, the first night he was there, he met a couple on the street and asked them to tell him where a restaurant was. They made a recommendation and the three of them went into the restaurant where they had a meal and quite a nice discussion. At the end of the discussion, Russell wanted to pay for the couple's meal but they wouldn't let him because they said if it hadn't been for him, they wouldn't have been allowed in the restaurant. Russell wanted to know why, and they said it was because they were Jewish. So the next day, when Russell went to Butenand's lab and office, he was told that Butenand wouldn't see him because he had had a meal with Jews. So after he had gone all that way to Germany, he never saw Butenand. He eventually met Butenand in the 1980s when Butenand was very old and sick. I was told by Carl Djerassi that Butenand twice nominated Russell for the Nobel Prize but it would be really very unusual for someone without a doctorate to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
How did the Russell Marker Lecture series come about?
Wartik: Russell was a very generous person. One day he popped into my office and asked if we could we use any money in the college. I assured him we could and I said I'd have to think about the details. So next time he came up I said it would be good to start a Russell Marker lecture series. He offered $50,000 so we started the Russell Marker lecture series in chemistry. Then not long after that he came back and offered more. Well, that's why we have all kinds of Russell Marker lectures, as well as a Russell Marker professorship. He gave freely to Penn State. I think Russell is one of the most important people who ever lived because his work led to the birth-control pill, which has helped to prevent so many unwanted pregnancies throughout the world.
Note: Read more of Wartik's recollections about Penn State and State College during the early days of his career.