The World War II aviator who discovered the formula for anti-dandruff shampoo

Long rows of townhouses, surrounded by mowed lawns, wooden gazebos, and the shade of several maples, pines, and magnolias. Just like in the movies, the residents of Plainfield Road in Cincinnati, Ohio, go out to retrieve letters from the tin mailbox at street level and sunbathe on their porches. It's a very quiet neighborhood. However, every now and then a compact concourse of cars breaks the silence. These vehicles are headed to the Milhovk-Rosenacker Funeral Home, located at the end of the street. It's an ostentatious building, presided over by an American flag, and has several viewing rooms. It's adjacent to Rest Haven Memorial Park, a lush green 26-hectare park that has served as a cemetery since 1929. It is in this place where, since March 10, 2012, the remains of John J. Parran Junior, the inventor of the formula for the legendary Head & Shoulders anti-dandruff shampoo, better known by its initials: H&S, rest.

Today, H&S is one of the flagship brands of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the multinational that also controls Pantene, Herbal Essences, Aussie, and Olay, among others. While the company doesn't publish revenue data by product, it does by market segment: beauty lines like H&S brought in $15.12 billion in 2024, 18% of the total. One of the longest-running products in the Cincinnati-based company's catalog is H&S, and it boasts: "In 1961, when Head & Shoulders first went on sale, it was the best product available for the treatment of dandruff," the company explains. Behind the discovery was a scientist named Dr. John J. Parran Jr. Who was he, and how did he find the formula that, seventy years later, still moves so many millions around the world?

A blurred trajectory

The figure of John J. Parran Junior is surrounded by a degree of mystery and anonymity. Few things are known. In fact, if you type the scientist's full name into Google, only 27 results appear. If you shorten it, like "John J. Parran," the list grows to 777 findings, but that still seems like a small number. To make matters worse, most of the references come from the brand's official website. The company explains that it was incorporated in 1949 and, after ten years of clinical trials, it stumbled upon the original formula for combating dandruff. "In 1961, the product, codenamed H&S internally, was finally ready for market testing," the company explains. "It proved so successful that it was launched throughout the United States just a year later." The company concludes the story by explaining how it has been modifying the formula to adapt it to changing times.

To complete Parran's biography, the ARA has followed records from US patent offices and family obituaries. He was born in 1923 in Bolivar, a small Tennessee town with a population of 5,000. After graduating from high school, he earned degrees in chemical engineering and bacteriology from the University of Tennessee. When World War II broke out, he was deployed to Italy, where he piloted B-24 fighter planes. Upon returning to the United States, he settled in Cincinnati. In 1949, he joined the staff of Procter & Gamble. He never moved again: he worked for four decades as a microbiologist. That's why his name and his research have been so diluted under the company's name.

For ten years, he locked himself in the laboratory trying to find a cure for dandruff. Until then, the only method to combat it was inconvenient homemade solutions, such as charcoal polish or egg oil. The moment Eureka It didn't reach him until 1961. "He discovered the active ingredient we still use today to treat dandruff," the company recalls. To find it, he tested more than 1,000 solutions. In the records, Parran is listed as author or co-author on 14 U.S. patents and 8 international patents.

Today, the company claims to follow its meticulous and consistent philosophy. "The brand succeeds thanks to a combination of expertise, scientific credibility, and straightforward communication—it has always advertised "dandruff-free hair."– and constant adaptation," analyzes Carolina Luis Bassa, director of the marketing master's degree at UPF. "As it has focused on a very specific topic—dandruff—it has generated consumer confidence," she concludes.