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Simms, Ernest S.
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- Ernest St. John Simms
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Dates of existence
1917-1983
History
Ernest St. John Simms (1917-1983) was the first African-American to hold a full-time academic appointment at Washington University School of Medicine. Ernest's father died suddenly in the mid-1930s, and though Ernest had only completed 2 years of an Engineering degree at the University of Minnesota, he returned home to St. Louis to help support his family. He first worked at Washington University as a laboratory technician in the Department of Surgery for four years, then left to work for Homer G. Phillips Hospital as a serologist, and for a small arms plant making bullets during World War II. While working for the arms plant, Ernest became the spokesman for black workers during a strike to protest the working conditions. The strike was successful and Ernest was promoted to foreman.
After the war, Simms returned to work for Washington University School of Medicine for good. In 1953, he was hired by Arthur Kornberg as a research assistant in the Microbiology Department. Over the next 6 years, Ernest Simms co-authored several papers relating to the biochemistry of DNA replication. Simms was an integral member of the research team that led to Arthur Kornberg and Severa Ochoa sharing the Nobel Prize "for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid" in 1959. Kornberg ultimately moved to Stanford and invited Simms to join him, but Ernest chose to stay in St. Louis and work under Herman Eisen, who replaced Kornberg as head of the laboratory.
In 1971, Ernest Simms was finally promoted to Associate Professor, making him a tenured faculty member at Washington University School of Medicine. He continued to teach and conduct research, but also became dedicated to his work on the Admissions Committee and the advancement of minority students at WUSM. Simms died in 1983, at the age of 66.
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