Alice Ball and leprosy

As part of its 120th anniversary celebrations, in 2019 the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine inscribed the names of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867–1934), and Alice Augusta Ball (1892–1916) into the frieze around its Keppel Street building (Moberly, 2020). Many will be familiar with the first two names, but Brewster (2022) explains ‘How the Woman Who Found a Leprosy Treatment Was Almost Lost to History’.

Who was Alice Ball? Born in 1892 in Seattle, United States, into a family of African American photographers, Ball's family – she had three siblings – moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1903; in 1905 they returned to Seattle; and in 1912 and 1914 Ball graduated from the University of Washington in pharmaceutical chemistry and pharmacy, respectively (Ferry, 2023).

In 1915 Ball graduated from the College of Hawaii (now the University of Hawaii) with an MSc, and for her thesis ‘she studied the chemical composition and active principle of the kava plant (Piper methysticum), which would later become the basis for her research on chaulmoogra oil’ (Mushtaq and Wermager, 2023).