Tragically, Ball died on December 31, 1916, at the young age of 24. Probably after complications from inhaling chlorine gas in a laboratory accident. Her death certificate, however, reports tuberculosis as the cause of death. During her short life, she failed to see the full impact of her discovery. Additionally, the president of the College of Hawaii, Dr. Arthur Dean, continued the Ball’s study without giving her credit for the discovery. Dean also claimed the same authorship of the discovery, calling it the “Dean method”.
In 1922, six years after her death, Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, an assistant surgeon at Kalihi hospital who originally encouraged Ball to study chaulmoogra oil, published a paper that gave Ball due credit. Despite this posthumous recognition, Alice Ball’s name was forgotten.
Thank you for your informative post. The success of women inventors and their discoveries have been placed on the ash heap of science and are now on the verge of being lost to history. Knowledge is power…