Instructions: Throughout history, many individuals have greatly influenced world history. Their accomplishments, ideas, and inventions have transformed the lives of millions of people. For this assignment, you will choose one person who has influenced world history. You should do outside research and write an informative essay in which you identify your subject’s significance and influence. Your subject must be from outside the United States. You may choose a woman from anywhere else in the world, or someone of either gender from a non-European country.
informative essay:
The Inventor Of The First Oral Contraceptive.
Luis Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas was born on March 16th, 1925 in Tepic, in the state of Nayarit, Mexico. When he became a teenager, he was enrolled at the Preparatory National School of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He remained at UNAM for his undergraduate work in chemistry and chemical engineering from 1945 to 1949. Later on, in 1948 he began graduate courses and he was required to complete an undergraduate thesis project. In 1950 he began his thesis project not knowing that this would be the start of a worldwide important invention.
In Mexico City, a chemical company called Syntex, which focused on synthesizing hormones, recruited Miramontes to do his thesis projects in one of their official labs and despite being a young student, the 25 year old Miramontes, demonstrated impressive talent and great chemical laboratory techniques and of course Syntex recognized this. Not only did they offer to recruit him to do his thesis in their company but they also offered him a job. He accepted and began working with two seasoned chemists: Carl Djerassi and George Rosenkranz.
Miramontes began working with Djerassi and Rosenkranz on a project to develop a synthetic form of the female hormone progesterone. Although in this time, progesterone was already being used as a contraceptive, Djerassi and Rosenkranz wanted to make it work better so Miramontes began the project. Of course, this was known as an ambitious goal because it required numerous steps in chemical synthesis and the only way to make synthetic progesterone would be to alter natural progesterone through some kind of elaborate chemical process. A complex organic molecule would have to be altered in a certain way, then that chemical product itself had to be altered numerous times in order to make a new molecule with the desired chemical properties, but the struggles that would have to be faced, never stopped Miramontes and he began working under the direction of Djerassi and Rosenkranz.
Miramontes worked out the final step in the process to create a synthetic progestin On October 15, 1951, called norethindrone. The expected application was contraception to replace natural progesterone. Many experiments with laboratory animals and humans showed norethindrone to be eight times more potent than natural progesterone, and that was not the only advantage it had. Everyone knew that progesterone had to be injected but norethindrone was taken orally. This was so important and seen as more convenient and attractive to women.
The thesis project was a success and it earned the student his undergraduate degree, and five years later a US patent. Miramontes was named along with the two senior chemists on US patent 2,744,122 for "oral contraceptives" on May 1st, 1956. Norethindrone was approved by government health agencies around the globe and later on became a prime component of the first oral contraceptive pills. Till this day, it is used in many contraceptive formulations and is an important factor in women's every day life.
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