[1] Bulgaria, although not immune to antisemitism, proved a safe haven, as the country managed to save its entire 48,000-strong Jewish population from deportation to Nazi concentration camps.

[1] In 1949, his father emigrated to the United States,[1] practiced in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and eventually retired near his son in San Francisco, California.

[8] Djerassi participated in the invention in 1951, together with Mexican Luis E. Miramontes and Hungarian-Mexican George Rosenkranz, of the progestin norethisterone—which, unlike progesterone, remained effective when taken orally and was far stronger than the naturally occurring hormone.

His preparation was first administered as an oral contraceptive to animals by Gregory Goodwin Pincus and Min Chueh Chang and to women by John Rock.

He bought a large tract of land in San Mateo County, California, and started a cattle ranch called SMIP.

[7][17] He arranged for his Klee collections to be donated to the Albertina in Vienna and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, effective on his death.

[18] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Djerassi continued to do significant scientific work, as a professor in the department of chemistry at Stanford University, and as an entrepreneur.

He pioneered novel physical research techniques for mass spectrometry and optical rotatory dispersion and applied them to the areas of organic chemistry and the life sciences.

[1] His scientific interests were wide-ranging, and his technological achievements include work in instrumentation, pharmaceuticals, insect control, the application of artificial intelligence in biomedical research, and the biology and chemistry of marine organisms.

In 1965 at Stanford University, nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg, computer scientist Edward Feigenbaum, and Djerassi devised the computer program DENDRAL (dendritic algorithm) for the elucidation of the molecular structure of unknown organic compounds taken from known groups of such compounds, such as the alkaloids and the steroids.

[31] Djerassi wrote five novels, four of which he described as "science-in-fiction",[32][33] fiction that portrays the lives of real scientists, with all their accomplishments, conflicts, and aspirations.

In Cantor's Dilemma, there is the suspicion of scientific fraud; in Bourbaki Gambit the question of personal achievement stands in the center.

[36] In the last, NO, he shows how young scientists develop an idea as far as founding a company to market a product[37] – something Djerassi himself did in the field of insecticides.

[29] According to British director Andy Jordan, who has produced all of his plays in England, Djerassi's dramatic works are "not wholly or straightforwardly naturalistic or realistic […but] avowedly text-driven, where ideas, themes, words and language were majorly important, a fact I had always to be conscious of as the director.2[39] Djerassi's first play, An Immaculate Misconception (1998), dealing with the in vitro fertilization procedure ICSI,[40] was followed by two plays about priority struggles in the history of science, Oxygen (co-authored with Roald Hoffmann, 1999)[41] and Calculus (2002),[42] and a drama at the intersection of chemistry and art history, Phallacy (2004).

2008)[45] and Foreplay (2010),[29] are the only three dramatic pieces that do not deal with science-in-literature but rather carry the notion of intellectual competitiveness into literature, philosophy and the humanities.

[30] ICSI, sex in the age of mechanical reproduction (2002), was taken to theaters and also to classrooms as a pedagogic wordplay, in many countries, including Spain and Argentina (by collaboration with Dr Àgata Baizán and Alberto Diaz) where it opened the VIII Latinoamerican and Caribbean Biotechnology meeting REDBIO-Argentina 2013 and featured in universities and theaters.

Djerassi's plays recognize the special contributions women make as scientists and to science, both directly and indirectly.

[100] One year after his second divorce, Djerassi began a relationship with Diane Middlebrook, a Stanford University professor of English and biographer.

[101][102] On July 5, 1978, Djerassi's artist daughter Pamela (born 1950; from his second marriage, to Norma Lundholm), committed suicide,[103][104] which is described in his autobiography.