To learn more about Just's life and work, I traveled to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This is where Just began his research career in 1909, breaking ground as the first African-American to study at the lab.

Guiding me through the institution is Dr.

Nipam Patel.

Dr.

Nipam Patel: As you know, he spent roughly 20 summers here doing his research in various capacities over those years.

He was a real sort of pioneer and stickler about-- was that animals actually had to be kept in very normal, good condition, so that their embryos and eggs could behave normally.

Rather than doing what other people were doing, when people were taking worms or whatever out of the water, sometimes the sunlight would get on them.

And he was like, "No, we can't have them in the sunlight," right?

Patel: Yeah, exactly.

Bonnie: A stickler for detail.

Yeah, really understanding the life history of the organism and paying attention to that.

Patel: So, this is Eel Pond.

Just and his friends in the marine biology lab would go out on boats and collect... They would collect, right.

So, at that time, you know, they didn't have these larger boats, they had smaller boats, but they would go out.

So, they're-- like, Nereis we can collect in this pond.

He was one of the huge figures in doing that and making the MBL such an important place for biological discovery.

Bonnie: I continued my journey of discovery and went to Boston to meet MIT professor Kenneth Manning.

Kenneth Manning: Hey!

Hello.

Bonnie: Hi.

How are you?

Voiceover: He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, the "Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just."

I saw myself working mostly on Ernest Everett Just, because I could see that his life was so rich and complex, and it opened up to so many questions that I myself had had over the years about the place of Blacks in American society.

So, let's talk about that seaside town where young Ernest Everett Just grew up.

That was a pivotal kind of experience for him.

Well, it was, and I think it's where he really gained his interest in science at a very early age.

He was attuned to his environment, and being on the sea, I think he loved the life of flora and fauna that existed there.

Bonnie: Ken spent years gathering details of Just's life.

And for a Black scientist in the early 1900s in America, the career path was full of challenges.

At Dartmouth College, E.E.

Just was the only graduate in his class to receive a Magnum Cum Laude distinction, but he was not allowed to give the commencement speech.

He was even detained briefly in a Nazi concentration camp.

And despite having stellar credentials, he was denied work opportunities at prominent Ivy League institutions.

He was told he would never be offered a job as a researcher, solely because of the color of his skin.

Manning: This man decided nothing was going to stop him from doing what he wanted to do.

He gave his life for science.

He kept a sort of a dignity and pride in his work and his own self-worth that is admirable for anyone in any discipline to see and want to emulate.

Bonnie: I went to the nation's capital to talk with E.E.

Just scholar and former Howard University biology professor Malcolm Byrnes.

From your professional perspective, why was he an important person?

Well, first of all, he made important discoveries in biology.

And one thing he learned was that egg cells have a mechanism whereby they can prevent more than one sperm from entering the egg cell, because if that were to happen, it would be devastating for the entire development of that egg and embryo.

And, from that, he felt that the egg was very responsive to its environment.

What influence did that work have on today's biologists?

E.E.

Just had a very unique or different view of biology.

He believed that all life is interconnected.

And he had, in some ways, a dialectical understanding of the organism and the environment.

And that resonates with biologists today.

Bonnie: It was becoming clear to me that Just's talent in science was equally matched by his philosophical yet poetic writing.

In the unpublished manuscript, he says this: "The organism is product of its environment-- arose from it, depends upon it, returns to it."

That's the passage in that book that really struck me too, because it is so poetic and makes you think.

And when he was at Dartmouth, you know, he wrote plays and organized plays and, you know, had this classical information that was going through his head.

I think he was incredibly well-educated and incredibly expressive in his writing.

And, you know, he will sort of, I want to say, launch into something that's incredibly poetic but also highly relevant, right?

Right, to the biology.

Byrnes: To biology!

Bonnie: Right.

Voiceover: Whether it's behind a microscope at the Marine Biological Lab or Howard University, E.E.

Just's legacy lives on and continues to inspire future scientists.

The word "pioneer" really describes him the best, because he was one of the first, and he's the reason why we're even able to stand here in the first place.

Ernest Everett Just made a major contribution by showing the innate connection between life at its core and its environment.

Can this basic understanding propel human beings to help one another?