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As science librarian at Hamilton Library, I was first introduced to Alice Augusta Ball by a question asked 25 years ago about the unique tree on the UH campus.

The UH professor with that question was surprised that, yes, there was a chaulmoogra tree on campus, which had been donated in 1931 by the King of Siam to thank Hawaii for its help with leprosy.

The professor’s research indicated that Alice Ball was the first African American and first woman to earn a master’s degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaii.

Intrigued, I entered her name in the online backfiles of the Journal of the American Chemical Society that the library had acquired. Alice had co-authored not one but two articles in that prestigious chemistry journal!

I was then hooked on Alice Ball.

Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, a Public Health Service physician at Kalihi Hospital, asked Alice to find a less painful injection of chaulmoogra oil for leprosy patients. By 1915, Alice had quickly developed the ethyl esters of chaulmoogra oil that made it water soluble.

In the next year, Dr. Hollmann reported that 63% of patients had “improved” and 6% were free of the leprosy “bacilli” after being treated with Alice’s preparations.

Tragically, Alice died shortly after making her breakthrough treatment for leprosy on the last day of 1916 at the much-too-young age of 24. Her leprosy treatment would continue to be used worldwide until the mid-1940s when sulfa drugs were introduced.

Dying before she was able to publish and because she was an African American and a woman, she and her accomplishments never made it into the pages of history.

The following aspects indicate Alice Ball’s uniqueness:

She and her family who were from Seattle lived in Hawaii from 1903 to 1905 where she finished her eighth grade at Central Grammar School.

She and her family lived for a short time in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1909 and 1910. Alice is likely the first woman to be a ham operator in North America.

Alice Ball was the first woman to become the head of the College of Hawaii’s chemistry department and also the first in the U.S. She became the first African American woman to become a member of the Sigma Xi scientific research honor society.

I believe that Alice Ball’s greatest gift to humanity was hope.

A community park in Seattle is now named the Alice Ball Park. In 2007, the UH Board of Regents awarded posthumously their Medal of Distinction to Alice Augusta Ball for her significant contribution to the treatment of Hansen’s Disease.

This February, Gov. David Ige signed a proclamation to have Alice August Ball Day celebrated every year on Feb. 28.

In addition to all of Alice’s accomplishments, I believe that Alice Ball’s greatest gift to humanity was hope.

After her discovery, physicians and leprosy sufferers had hope for the first time that one day patients would be free of the dreaded leprosy and able to return to their families.