Madeleine M. Joullié (born March 29, 1927) is an American-Brazilian organic chemist. She was the first woman to join the University of Pennsylvania chemistry faculty as well as the first female organic chemist to be appointed to a tenure track position in a major American university. She was one of the first affirmative action officers at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a distinguished record as a teacher of both undergraduate and graduate-level organic chemistry, and as a mentor of students. Joullié is also an active researcher in organic chemistry who has published three textbooks of organic chemistry, more than 18 review articles, and more than 300 scientific papers. Her work in synthesizing organic compounds such as tilorone, furanomycin, and numerous cyclopeptides has led to the development of antibiotic and antiviral drugs. Joullié has received numerous awards, including the 1978 Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society, in recognition of her accomplishments in teaching and research.
Early life Madeleine Joullié was born in Paris, France. Her father, an international businessman, soon moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she attended the Lycée Français. The family also lived briefly in São Paulo. There she attended a private school, the Liceu Rio Branco. Joullié moved to the United States to study in 1946. She obtained a B.S. degree in chemistry from Simmons College, a women's college in Boston, in 1949. Then she moved to Philadelphia, where she was the only full-time female graduate student in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. There weren't even bathrooms for women in the chemistry building. She earned an M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1953. She worked with Allan R. Day, who inspired Joullié as both a researcher and a teacher. Also at the university, Joullié met Richard E. Prange (1932–2008), a condensed matter theorist in the physics department. They married in 1959.
Career In 1953, Madeleine Joullié joined the University of Pennsylvania chemistry faculty, the first woman to do so. Originally in a non-tenure-track position, Joullié taught undergraduate organic chemistry five days a week and ran the lab. In her first five years, none of the graduate students would work with her, so she carried out research in collaboration with undergraduates. As more women entered the department, first female and later male graduate students began to work with her. Joullié received a Fulbright scholarship to lecture at the University of Brazil (1965). While there, she wrote a textbook in Portuguese on heterocyclic chemistry. She has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University (1968), CRNS (Grenoble, France, 1987), the University of California at Santa Barbara (1989), and Cambridge, England (1997), but the majority of her career has been spent at the University of Pennsylvania. Joullié became a full professor in 1974.
Community involvement Joullié was active in the safety committee at UPenn, helping to identify and enforce safe work guidelines for the chemistry department. In 1970, Joullié and Mildred Cohn worked on the Committee on the Status of Women, which gathered data and documented the second-class status of women at Penn. The percentage of women holding faculty positions was far below the percentage of qualified women Ph.D.'s, and those women who had positions held lower rank, received lower salaries, and waited longer for promotion. The committee developed affirmative action guidelines, supporting the university's efforts to recruit more women and minority faculty. Later in the 1970s, dean Vartan Gregorian appointed her as one of the first affirmative action officers at the University of Pennsylvania. Between 1976 and 1980, Joullié reviewed the hiring and promotions processes of the School of Arts and Science, comparing resumes of male and female candidates. On some occasions, when she felt that qualified women had been ignored in the hiring process, she flatly refused to sign off on new hires. Her effectiveness in the position led Provost Eliot Stellar to appoint her as the chair of the university's Council for Equal Opportunity, overseeing affirmative action in all departments. Of her affirmative action activities, Joullié says: "I served in that role for seven years, without help, extra pay, or teaching relief... It was not a pleasant job, but it did produce results. The School of Arts and Sciences was so successful with their affirmative action program that I was then asked by the provost to chair the Council for Equal Opportunity to oversee the affirmative action programs of all the schools at Penn." Described by professor Helen Davies as "fearless and formidable", Joullié is credited as having played a key role in creating a culture of equality for women at the university. Joullié also helped the American Chemical Society to develop professional guidelines for chemists.
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