In the early 1930s, DePauw University was a highly productive center of chemical research, and Dean William M. Blanchard hired Percy Julian as a research fellow after mentoring him as an undergraduate there. Julian, who had earned a Ph.D. in Vienna in 1931 and needed a position to continue his research career, joined a chemistry program in 1933 whose history reached back to 1839, when the university was Asbury College and chemistry was taught as a natural science course. Chemistry became a distinct department in 1881 under Phillip S. Baker, the department prospered, and a chemistry major was established in 1896, from which Julian graduated in 1920. As a research fellow from 1932 to 1935, Julian worked with colleagues from Vienna and several DePauw students to produce an exceptional number of high-quality research papers. Among them was an April 1935 Journal of the American Chemical Society paper, “Studies in the Indole Series V. The Complete Synthesis of Physostigmine (Eserine),” which explained how Julian synthesized physostigmine and is presented as the most significant chemical research publication to come from DePauw. The collaborative student and faculty approach that Julian promoted continued afterward. In 1967, Julian was appointed to the DePauw University Board of Trustees, and that same year planning began for a new science building to replace the sixty-five-year-old Minshall Laboratory, with construction beginning in 1968. The Science and Mathematics Center was dedicated in September 1972, with Julian delivering the address “Science and the Good Life of Man,” and after his death DePauw University named the Percy L. Julian Science and Mathematics Center in his honor.