The chemist credited with inventing a drug that led to birth control pills died of cancer complications on Friday.

Carl Djerassi, 91, died at his San Francisco home, announced Dan Stober, a Stanford University spokesman. His son Dale, his grandson Alexander and stepdaughter Leah Middlebrook survive Djerassi.

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A chemistry professor emeritus at Stanford, Djerassi was best known for leading researchers in Mexico City that, 63 years ago, synthesized the drug norethindrone, which became a critical ingredient of the first birth control pill.

What became popularly known as simply "the pill" radically changed sexual practices after giving women unprecedented control over reproductive health. It also changed health care as physicians, who used to stay out of matters related to contraception, started prescribing the drug.

In 1939, Djerassi who is Austrian by birth moved to the U.S. with his mother.

In an obituary released by Stanford University, Natural Science Professor Richard N. Zare said Djerassi is probably the greatest chemist that the university ever had, adding he did not know of any other in the world who combined literary talents and science mastery as Djerassi.  Considered a Renaissance man, he also wrote plays, short stories and poems.

Zare added that Djerassi is the only person to receive from U.S. President Richard Nixon the National Medal of Science and end up in the president's blacklist in the same year.

Djerassi said in his book, "This Man's Pill," that the birth control drug also changed his life, spurring him to explore more how scientific breakthroughs can alter society. He spent earnings from the sale of the pill on the art work of Paul Klee, which he ended up donating to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

In 1969, he published an opinion piece about the effects on the world of contraceptive research in the U.S., and in the next year came up with another piece exploring the possible making of birth control pills for men.

He wrote that his two public policy pieces had convinced him that politics, rather than the pursuit science, had a greater effect on the future of human birth control. 

TagsCarl Djerassi, Birth control pill