Jewel Plummer Cobb was famous for her pioneering cancer research using cell culture techniques and for her leadership as one of the first Black women to head a major American university. A cell biologist by training, she spent decades growing cancer cells in the lab to test chemotherapy drugs, and her work helped demonstrate that methotrexate could effectively treat skin cancer, lung cancer, and childhood leukemia. Later, as president of California State University, Fullerton, she became a national voice for increasing the representation of women and minorities in science.
Early Life and Education
Cobb initially enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1942 but found the environment hostile to Black students. She transferred to Talladega College in Alabama, where she was mentored by bacteriology professor James R. Hayden and earned her bachelor’s degree in biology. She then moved to New York University, completing both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in cell physiology. That training in cell biology would define her career.
Cancer Research and Cell Culture
Cobb’s most significant scientific contribution was perfecting methods for growing human cancer cells outside the body so researchers could test drugs on them directly. She became especially skilled at culturing cells taken from patient tumor biopsies, a technique that allowed her to observe how individual tumors responded to different chemotherapy agents. In 1952, she founded her own laboratory at the University of Illinois Medical School, establishing its first tissue culture facility.
Over the following years, she and colleague Jane Wright made a critical contribution by demonstrating that methotrexate, a drug still widely used today, was effective against skin and lung cancer as well as childhood leukemia. This was significant because it provided concrete laboratory evidence that a single drug could work across multiple cancer types. Cobb continued to focus on melanoma cells throughout the 1960s and 1970s, publishing studies on how various chemotherapy agents affected melanoma growth in culture and how melanoma cells responded to hormones that stimulate pigment production.
Her approach, testing drugs on cells grown from actual patient tumors, was an early step toward the kind of personalized cancer treatment that modern oncology now prioritizes. Rather than simply giving patients a drug and hoping it worked, Cobb’s methods offered a way to study drug effects in a controlled setting first.
Leading Cal State Fullerton
In 1981, Cobb was named president of California State University, Fullerton, becoming the first Black woman to lead a major university in the western United States. She held the position for nearly a decade, and the changes she made were tangible. She secured funding for a new science lab and computer science building, created two entirely new colleges (the College of Communication and the College of Engineering and Computer Science), and built the university’s first on-campus housing. The residence halls now bear her name.
She also oversaw the construction of the Ruby Gerontology Center, which was the first building on campus funded entirely through donations rather than state money. Under her leadership, the university established a satellite campus in Mission Viejo and served as a venue for the 1984 Summer Olympics. A deal she brokered with the Marriott Corporation and the city of Fullerton resulted in a hotel that still operates near campus today.
Advocacy for Minorities and Women in Science
Throughout her career, Cobb worked to open doors in science for people who had historically been shut out. Before arriving at Cal State Fullerton, she served as dean and professor of zoology at Connecticut College, where she established a scholarship for Black students and created a post-baccalaureate program designed to prepare underrepresented students for medical and dental school. She then moved to Douglass College, the women’s division of Rutgers University, where she developed programs to improve access to science and math for women and minorities.
At Cal State Fullerton, she established faculty teams to tutor students in mathematics, a practical intervention aimed at keeping students from dropping out of STEM tracks. This commitment to inclusion across every institution she led is often cited as her most enduring legacy. She didn’t just study science herself; she systematically built programs and infrastructure so that others, particularly Black students and women, could follow.
Cobb retired from the presidency in 1990 but remained active in the university community and in advocacy for diversity in science for years afterward.