The science behind the discovery of the contraceptive pill, in Mexico

In 1951, a young Mexican scientist, Luis Ernesto Miramontes, achieved the first synthesis of norethisterone, a medication that led to the development of the world’s first oral contraceptive. The U.S. Patent Office has recognized the invention as one that has contributed to the “social and economic well-being” of the United States, and the Mexican Science Academy considers it among the largest contributions from Mexican science.

Miramontes was only 26, a student of chemistry at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and an employee of Syntex Laboratories, when he synthesized norethisterone, which would be used in the first oral contraceptives. 

His invention helped prompt the ‘60s sexual and moral revolution, empowering women all over the world. Two other scientists facilitated the invention, George Rosenkranz and Carl Djerassi, though the latter is frequently called the father of the contraceptive pill. Historians agree, however, that Miramontes made the discovery.

His path to discovery

Miramontes was born in 1925 in the state of Nayarit, Mexico. He was always interested in science. Even though his education was in rural schools, he found a way to achieve his aspirations of becoming a scientist and inventor.

Thanks to a scholarship from the government of Nayarit, he moved to Mexico City to attend high school. With his high grade point average, he enrolled in the chemistry department at UNAM.

While Miramontes pursued his degree, Syntex, the Mexican pharmaceutical firm where he also worked, was searching for a molecule, norethisterone. It was obtained from barbasco, a Mexican plant found in the state of Oaxaca and used by women in the state’s Istmo area. The cost of extraction, however, was high: a gram of norethisterone was more expensive than a gram of gold.

Miramontes was able to synthesize it in a laboratory, making it cheaper and easier to obtain. Rosenkranz and Djerassi, the directors and stockholders of Syntex, took credit and left for the United States, where the Searle pharmaceutical company commercialized the product with little variation of the molecule. Searle offered Miramontes the position of director of research and development in Mexico, and he accepted.

The importance of the pill

Many authors, associations and academies have affirmed the importance of the birth control pill and the synthesis achieved by Miramontes.

In the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the United States, Miramontes appears alongside luminaries such as Pasteur, Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers.

In a 2006 essay, published in the FASEB Journal, the director of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology stated that birth control was among the discoveries that the Nobel Prize has still not recognized.

In 2000, a group of scientists including Nobel laureates nominated norethisterone as one of the most important discoveries of the past century, and in 2003, the book “Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History” explained how the molecule was one of the most important in history. 

In 2009, the BBC listed Miramontes as one of the five most outstanding Latin American researchers throughout history. Miramontes gave birth control to humanity, a gift from a Mexican scientist to the world.