Epsilon Phi Chapter

Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.

Dr. Ernest E. Just

Biologist Of International Fame

(1883-1941)

Ernest Everett Just, an eminent marine biologist, was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Seeking a substantial education, he attended the Industrial School of State College, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Kimball Academy at Meriden New Hampshire; and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, from which he graduated in 1907. Each school he attended was proud to have him because of his kindly demeanor and his unusual ability as a scholar. Accordingly each school he attended honored him.

At Dartmouth he won the Phi Beta Kappa Key, the highest scholastic award to be given to a student in an undergraduate college.

Upon graduating from Dartmouth he became a teacher in the M Street High School of Washington, D.C., now the Dunbar. As Brother Just was marked with greatness, his rise was inevitable. Soon he answered the call of Howard University to become an instructor in Biology, his major field. it was here he fascinated the hearts of Negro youth, inspired them and made them ambitious. Here he met Oscar J. Cooper, who told him of the fraternal dreams of collegiate empire in his mind and in the minds of his bosom friends, Edgar A. Love and Frank Coleman, all members of the Howard University Class of 1913. He listened to their fancies and their dreams, helped them become realities, and thereby became with them a Founder of our charming Fraternity, the Omega Psi Phi.

In 1915, after displaying unusual brilliancy in research, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People conferred upon him the Spingarn Medal, which each year is given to a Negro who has been most outstanding in achievement. The following year he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago.

The honors that have since come to Brother just are too numerous to mention in our limited space; but we shall list a few of them. He did his work so well, that he was selected as guest investigator, to engage in research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute fur Biologie. In 1929, he spent six months in Biological Research at Naples, Italy. He had also at his disposal the private laboratories of several of the crowned heads of Europe.

For twenty years at least he did research work at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A gift from the Rosenwald Fund of about $80,000.00 a year for several years made it possible for Dr. just to be relieved of his undergraduate teaching assignment and devote all his time to research and the teaching of graduate students.

Aside from this, Dr. Just was selected by leading biologists of Germany as the best fitted among world scholars to write a treatise on fertilization.

Brother just is a member of the National Research Council, editor of the international journal, "Protoplasma." He is a member of the American Society of Zoologists, the American Naturalists, and a corresponding member of La Societe des Science Naturelles et Mathematiques de France.

Our Founders are all men of distinction who have won a lasting place in the hearts not only of Omega men, but in the hearts of people of many lands.