In his 2003 play Ego, Carl Djerassi creates a character named Stephen Marx who challenges a therapist to try and define him, to come up with a label that will accurately capture his life.

It's not a simple task in the play, and Djerassi isn't exactly easy to sum up in real life, either. The Kenyon graduate is best known as the "father of the pill" for synthesizing the first oral contraceptive for women. His achievement earned him the National Medal of Science, the first Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. But Djerassi's career didn't stop there. He went on to a distinguished academic career at Stanford University, and he founded a successful company that developed new approaches to insect control. His work earned him the National Medal of Technology.

The logical next step for Djerassi was...literature. Over the past decade, he has published several plays, short stories, and novels, along with an autobiography and a memoir. He describes his work as "science-in-fiction" that illustrates the human side of science and the personal conflicts faced by scientists. Djerassi is also the founder of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program near Woodside, California, which provides residencies and studio space for artists in the visual arts, literature, choreography and performing arts, and music.

But one of Djerassi's biggest accomplishments came before all of these other successes. He grew up in pre-World War II Vienna, the son of Jewish physicians. His family fled the Nazis in 1938, and Djerassi eventually arrived in New York, 16 years old and penniless. Just two years later, he graduated from Kenyon summa cum laude with a degree in chemistry in 1943.