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Anfinsen,
Christian Boehmer |
Ames, Bruce N. |
Barker,
Horace Albert |
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Beijerinck,
Martinus |
Berzelius,
Jöns
Jacob |
Brown,
Michael Stuart |
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Hodgkin,
Dorothy
Crowfoot |
Kluyver,
Albert Jan |
Lipmann,
Fritz Albert |
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Lynen,
Feodor |
Nirenberg,
Marshall |
Prusiner,
Stanley B. |
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Stetten,
DeWitt, Jr. |
Vagelos,
P. Roy |
Van
Niel, Cornelis
Bernardus Kees |
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Warburg,
Otto
Heinrich |
Winogradsky,
Sergey Nikolaevich |
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Anfinsen,
Christian Boehmer (1916-1995) American
biochemist
Anfinsen was educated at Swarthmore
College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard,
where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1943. Subsequently he
taught at Harvard Medical School until 1950. He then
moved to the National Heart Institute at Bethesda, Maryland,
where he served as chief of the laboratory of cellular
physiology. In 1963 Anfinsen joined the National Institute
of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, another institute
within the National Institutes of Health, as chief of
the laboratory of chemical biology. In 1982 he moved
to the Johns Hopkins University as professor of biology.
By 1960 Stanford Moore and William Stein had determined
fully the sequence of the 124 amino acids in ribonuclease,
the first enzyme to be so analyzed. Anfinsen, however,
was more concerned with the shape and structure of
the enzyme and the forces that permitted it always
to adopt the same unique configuration. He found that
minimal chemical interventionmerely putting
the enzyme into a favorable environmentwas sufficient
to induce "denatured" ribonuclease, which
has lost its three-dimensional shape without the rupture
of peptide bonds, to adopt the one configuration that
restores enzymatic activity. The important conclusion
that Anfinsen drew from this observation was that
all the information for the assembly of the three-dimensional
protein must be contained in the protein's sequence
of amino acidsits primary structure. He went
on to show similar behavior in other proteins. For
this work, Anfinsen shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry with Moore and Stein.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia
of Scientists, 2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute
of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Hazel Muir, ed. Larousse Dictionary of Scientists.
New York: Larousse, 1994
Additional Readings or Websites
Alan N. Schechter. "Christian B. Anfinsen, 1916-1995."
Nature Structural Biology 8 (1995): 621-3.
American National Biography: http://www.anb.org/articles/13/13-02648.html
Profiles in Science: http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KK/
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1972/anfinsen-bio.html
Nature Encyclopedia of Life Sciences: http://www.els.net
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to top
Ames, Bruce N. (1928-) American
biochemist and geneticist
Ames attended Cornell University from
1946 to 1950, receiving his B.A. degree in chemistry/biochemistry.
He then moved to the California Institute of Technology
for his graduate study under Herschel K. Mitchell, a
former postdoctoral fellow of George Beadle, in the
biology department. Ames worked on the biosynthesis
of histidine in Neurospora. After taking his Ph.D. within
three years, he came to the National Institute of Arthritis
and Metabolic Diseases in 1953 as a Public Health Service
fellow. There he isolated the enzymes involved in the
histidine pathway, and began to work on gene regulation
in histidine biosynthesis using Salmonella. Collaborating
with Philip Hartman of the Johns Hopkins University,
Ames showed that the histidine genes could be overexpressed
if histidine availability limited the growth rate. He
also demonstrated that the cluster of genes was controlled
together as a unit by a regulatory sequence. In 1962,
Ames became a section head in the newly created laboratory
of molecular biology led by Gordon Tomkins.
Ames is perhaps best known for the "Ames test,"
the test he developed for chemical mutagens. Mutagens
are agents that tend to increase the frequency or
extent of genetic mutation. The Ames test, which uses
a rapid and inexpensive bacterial assay for mutagenicity,
complements epidemiologic surveys and animal tests
that are necessarily slower, more laborious, and far
more expensive. Ames began to work on this test in
1964, and after moving to the University of California,
Berkeley, as professor of biochemistry in 1967, he
continued to improve the sensitivity of the test.
The Ames test has been used extensively to help evaluate
the mutagenic and carcinogenic risks of a large number
of chemicals. In the 1980s, Ames' research interest
shifted to the question of aging and showed the role
of mitochondrial decay as a major contributor to aging
and age-related degenerative diseases. He is a recipient
of the National Medal of Science and a member of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Source
Bruce N. Ames. "An Enthusiasm for Metabolism."
Journal of Biological Chemistry 278 (2003):
4369-80.
Additional Readings or Websites
Idea Channel: http://www.ideachannel.com/Ames.htm
Home page: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/BMB/amesb.html
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Barker, Horace Albert (1907-2000)
American biochemist
Horace Albert Barker, informally called
"Nook," was educated at Stanford University
and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1933. His research
interest then turned to soil microbiology and microbial
biochemistry. He set out on a two-year postdoctoral
fellowship to study first with C. B. van Niel at the
Hopkins Marine Station, Pacific Grove, California, and
then a year in the Netherlands to study with van Niel's
mentor, A. J. Kluyver in Delft. There he initiated an
investigation that would later lead him to discover
vitamin B 12 coenzymes.
In 1936 Barker started his academic career at the University
of California, Berkeley as an instructor in soil microbiology,
and he became professor of soil microbiology in 1946.
His official title was periodically changed until 1959
when he became a professor in the new department of
biochemistry. A building on the Berkeley campus was
named after him in 1988.
Barker made major contributions to the study of bacterial
metabolism, particularly in the synthesis and oxidation
of fatty acids, the fermentation of amino acids and
purines, and carbohydrate transformations. He was
also well known for his pioneering use of radioactive
carbon-14 tracers in biochemical research in the mid
1940s and for his work on the biochemical function
of vitamin B12 in the
late 1950s. Barker was also influential as a teacher
and a mentor. As a student in his laboratory once
wrote: "He teaches the course the way everyone
imagines their favorite grandfather would do it."
Barker was a member of the National Academy of Sciences
and a recipient of the National Medal of Science.
Source
Clinton E. Ballou. "Horace Albert Barker, Biochemistry:
Berkeley." University of California: In Memoriam,
2001.
http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/Alumni/Cal_Monthly/February_2001/In_
Memoriam.asp
Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. "Horace Barker," California Alumni Association at U.C. Berkeley (Oct. 26, 2003).
http://alumni.berkeley.edu/Alumni/Cal_Monthly/February_2001/In_
Memoriam.asp
Additional Readings or Websites
Horace A. Barker. "Exploration of Bacterial
Metabolism." Annual Review of Biochemistry
47 (1978): 1-33
King-Thom Chung. "Horace A. Barker (1907) Pioneer
of Anaerobic Metabolism." Anaerobe
5 (1999): 513-7.
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Beijerinck, Martinus W. (1851-1931)
Dutch microbiologist
Educated at the Delft Technical School
and the University of Leiden (Ph.D. 1899), Beijerinck
taught in agricultural schools, worked in the Netherlands
Yeast and Alcohol Manufactory (1884-95), and taught
at the Technical School in Delft (1895-1921). His research
on the biology of gall wasps and gall formation in1882
led to the theory of ontogeny in higher plants and animals
as being controlled by a series of growth enzymes that
become active in fixed succession. He made major contributions
to microbiology by developing the enrichment culture
technique, simultaneously with Sergey Winogradsky, which
permits the isolation of highly specialized microorganisms.
Beijerinck cultivated and isolated Rhizobium leguminosarum,
a bacillus that fixes free nitrogen and causes the formation
of nodules on the roots of Leguminosae. He also characterized
Azobacter as nitrogen-fixing, and isolated the new genus,
Aerobacter. In studying tobacco mosaic disease, he concluded
that the filterable pathogen was a contagium vivum fluidum,
a term coined to convey his concept of a living infectious
agent in a fluid (noncellular) forma revolutionary
idea at a time when life and cellularity were thought
to be inextricably connected.
Source
James F. Mauer, et al., eds. Concise Dictionary
of Scientific Biography. New York: Charles Scribner
& Sons, 1981.
Additional Readings or websites
Pieter Bos and Bert Theunissen, eds. Beijerinck
and the Delft School of Microbiology. Delft:
Delft University Press, 1995.
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Berzelius,
Jöns Jacob (1779-1848)
Swedish chemist
Berzelius's early life was marked by
a struggle to obtain a satisfactory education. In 1796
he entered the University of Uppsala but his studies
were interrupted because of lack of funds. He began
his chemical experiments without any official encouragement
and from 1799 he worked during the summers as a physician
at Medevi Springs where he analyzed the waters. He finally
obtained his M.D. in 1802 with a dissertation on the
medical uses of the voltaic pile. After graduating,
Berzelius moved to Stockholm where he did research with
Wilhelm Hisinger, a mining chemist. Their fist success
came in 1803 with the isolation of cesium, although
the discovery was anticipated by Martin Klaproth. Berzelius
later discovered selenium (1817), thorium (1828), and
his coworkers discovered lithium (1818) and vanadium
(1830). In 1807 Berzelius was appointed professor at
the School of Surgery in Stockholm (later the Karolinska
Institute).
Berzelius was a meticulous experimenter and systematizer
of chemistry. His early work was on electrochemistry,
and he developed a "dualistic" view of compounds,
in which they were composed of positive and negative
parts. He was an ardent supporter of John Dalton's
atomic theory. From 1835 Berzelius's rigid adherence
to the dualistic theory proved less fruitful in the
study of organic chemistry. He was an inventor of
much familiar chemical apparatus, including rubber
tubing and filter papers. He also introduced the modern
chemical symbols represented by letters. He had a
knack of coining words for phenomena and substancesthe
terms "catalysis," "protein,"
and "isomerism" were all introduced by him.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia
of Scientists, 2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia:
Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Additional Readings or websites
Alan J. Rocke. Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth
Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro. Columbus:
Ohio State University Press, 1984.
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Brown, Michael
Stuart (1941-) American biochemist
and molecular geneticist
Brown earned his B.A. from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1962, and received his M.D. in 1966.
After an internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital
in Boston (1966-68), he came to the National Institutes
of Health as a Clinical Associate and worked in Earl
Stadtman's laboratory of biochemistry for three years.
In 1971 he was appointed assistant professor at the
University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas,
and in 1977 he became professor of genetics and director
of the Center of Genetic Diseases.
Brown's research interests have included digestive
enzymes, particularly their role in the metabolism
of cholesterol. However, he is perhaps best known
for his studies of lipid receptors on body cells and
their importance in removing cholesterol from the
blood. Cholesterol is produced by mammalian cells
as well as being taken up into cells from food. It
is carried in the bloodstream by proteins called LDLs
(low-density lipoproteins. commonly known as "bad
cholesterol"). Brown worked on the genetic disease
hypocholesterolemia. He found that sufferers from
the disease lack a receptor on their cell surfaces
to which the LDLs bind, and that this problem results
in abnormally high levels of cholesterol in the bloodstream.
Brown's research on cholesterol was done in collaboration
with Joseph Goldstein, with whom he has had a long
and fruitful scientific partnership since 1966. In
1984 Brown and Goldstein elucidated the gene sequence
which codes for the LDL receptor, and opened up the
possibility of synthesizing drugs to control cholesterol
metabolism. They were jointly awarded the 1985 Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia
of Scientists, 2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia:
Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Hazel Muir, ed. Larousse Dictionary of Scientists.
New York: Larousse, 1994.
Additional Readings or Websites
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1985/brown-bio.html
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Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowfoot (1910-1994)
British crystallographer
Dorothy Crowfoot, as she was born, was
educated at Somerville College, Oxford. After a brief
period as a postgraduate student at Cambridge University,
she returned to Oxford in 1934 and spent her entire
academic career there. After various appointments within
the university, she became the first Royal Society Wolfson
Research Professor at Oxford in 1960.
Hodgkin had the good fortune to fall under the influence
of the inspiring and scientifically imaginative physicist
J. D. Bernal at Cambridge, who opened the way to investigate
complex organic molecules with the technique of X-ray
diffraction analysis. Hodgkin's first major result
came in 1949 when, with Charles Bunn, she published
the three dimensional structure of penicillin. This
was followed by the structure of vitamin B12
in 1956 and that of insulin in 1969. For her work
on vitamin B12, Hodgkin
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia
of Scientists, 2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia:
Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Additional Readings or Websites
Georgina Ferry. Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life.
New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1998.
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1964/hodgkin-bio.html
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Kluyver, Albert Jan (1888-1956)
Dutch microbiologist
Kluyver received a chemical engineering
degree from the Technical School of Delft in 1910. Later,
in 1922, he was appointed the chair of general and applied
microbiology at the same school, the position he held
until his death. He greatly influenced the chemical
study of microorganisms. His most important contribution
was the statement that hydrogen transfer (the process
of oxidation) is a fundamental feature of all metabolic
processes. During World War II, he studied microbial
morphology using an electron microscope. He had considerable
interest in commercial applications, and collaborated
with the Netherlands Yeast and Alcohol Manufactory in
Delft.
Source
Hazel Muir, ed. Larousse Dictionary of Scientists.
New York: Larousse, 1994
Additional Readings or Websites
A. F. Kamp, et al., eds. Albert Jan Kluyver: His
Life and Work. Amsterdam and New York:, 1959.
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Lipmann, Fritz Albert (1899-1986)
German-American biochemist
Lipmann was educated at the Universities
of Königsberg and Berlin, earning his M.D. in 1922
and his Ph.D. in 1927. He then worked with Otto Meyerhof
in Heidelberg and taught at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
in Berlin (1927-31), but with the rise of the Nazis
he decided to accept a position at the Carlsberg Foundation
in Copenhagen. In 1939 Lipmann moved to America, where
he worked at the Cornell Medical School (1939-41), Harvard
(1941-49), and the Massachusetts General Hospital in
Boston (1949-57), before becoming professor of biochemistry
at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in
New York, a post he occupied until his retirement in
1970.
Working on the breakdown of glucose by a particular
bacterium in 1937, Lipmann found that a certain oxidation
would not proceed without the addition of some phosphate.
Later he discovered that adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
is the source of the phosphate that delivers the energy.
He introduced the controversial "~" symbol
to indicate a "high-energy" phosphate bond,
representing for example ATP as ADP~P. It was not
for this work, however, that Lipmann shared the 1953
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hans Krebs
but for his discovery in 1947 of coenzyme A and its
importance for intermediary metabolism. While working
on the role of phosphate in cell metabolism, Lipmann
discovered that a heat-stable factor was acting as
a carrier of acetyl (CH3CO-)
groups. It could be replaced by any other known cofactor.
Lipmann eventually isolated and identified what he
termed "cofactor A," or CoA, showing that
it contained vitamin B2.
He also showed that the two-carbon compound in the
Krebs cycle that joined with oxaloacetic acid to form
citric acid was in fact acetyl CoA. The coenzyme was
soon shown to have wider applications than the Krebs
cycle, when in 1950 Feodor Lynen found that it played
a key role in the metabolism of fats.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia
of Scientists, 2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia:
Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Hazel Muir, ed. Larousse Dictionary of Scientists.
New York: Larousse, 1994.
Additional Readings or Websites
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1953/lipmann-bio.html
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Lynen, Feodor
(1911-1979) German biochemist
Lynen received his Ph.D. from the University
of Munich under Heinrich Wieland in 1937. That same
year he married Wieland's daughter. He was appointed
to the faculty at Munich in 1942, and became professor
of chemistry in 1947. In 1954 he became director of
the Max Planck Institute for Cell Chemistry in Munich.
In 1950 Lynen showed that coenzyme A (CoA) played
the central role in the breakdown of fats in the body.
Fats were first broken down by the enzyme lipase into
a number of free fatty acids. It had been shown in
1904 that these were then degraded two carbon atoms
at a time. Lynen demonstrated that this was done by
coenzyme A, which combined with the fatty acid and
formed, after a number of intermediary steps, acetoacetyl
coenzyme A at one end of the chain. For his work on
fatty acid metabolism and on cholesterol, he shared
the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with
Konrad Bloch.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia
of Scientists, 2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia:
Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Hazel Muir, ed. Larousse Dictionary of Scientists.
New York: Larousse, 1994.
Additional Readings or Websites
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1964/lynen-bio.html
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Nirenberg, Marshall (1927-)
American biochemist and molecular biologist
The son of a land developer, Nirenberg
was born in New York City but grew up in Orlando, Florida.
Nirenberg pursued his early interest in biology and
chemistry at the University of Florida, and received
his Ph.D. in 1957 at the University of Michigan for
his work on the enzyme transport mechanism for the sugar
hexose in ascites tumor cells.
Nirenberg then moved to the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) in Bethesda as a postdoctoral fellow
to work with DeWitt Stetten, Jr. During his collaboration
with William Jakoby on the genetic control of enzymatic
induction, Nirenberg became interested in protein
synthesis in a cell-free system. He was appointed
a staff scientist at NIH in 1960. In a series of experiments
conducted with Johann Heinrich Matthaei, a postdoctoral
fellow from Germany, Nirenberg discovered in 1961
that poly-U, a synthetic RNA polymer of polyurdylic
acid, functions as a template for producing a protein
composed of the single amino acid phenylalanine. UUU
became the first word of the genetic code deciphered.
It took five years to solve the entire code for twenty
amino acids. In this phase of the work Nirenberg faced
fierce competition from the eminent scientist Severo
Ochoa, and NIH scientists teamed up to help him showing
a remarkable esprit de corps. Among them, Philip Leder,
Maxine Singer and Leon Heppel assisted Nirenberg by
devising enzymatic methods for synthesizing trinucleotides
of known sequences. Nirenberg shared the 1968 Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Har Gobind Khorana
and Robert W. Holley for their investigations into
the genetic code. Since then, Nirenberg has been exploring
the new scientific frontier of neurobiology at NIH.
Source
Buhm Soon Park and Victoria Harden, "Marshall
Nirenberg," Nature Encyclopedia of Life
Sciences, http://www.els.net
Additional Readings or Websites
Profiles in Science: http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/JJ/
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1968/nirenberg-bio.html
Lasker Foundation: http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/library/lumin_mn.html
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Prusiner, Stanley B. (1942-)
American neurologist
Prusiner received his A.B. in chemistry
in 1964 and his M.D. in 1968 from the University of
Pennsylvania. Following his internship at the University
of California, San Francisco, he came to the National
Heart and Lung Institute in 1969 as a Clinical Associate.
Working in Earl Stadtman's laboratory, he learned various
aspects of the research process in biochemistry: developing
assays, purifying macromolecules, documenting a discovery
by many approaches, and writing clear manuscripts describing
what is known and what remains to be investigated. As
he later recalled, his three years at NIH were critical
in his scientific education.
In 1972, Prusiner began a residency at the University
of California, San Francisco in the department of
neurology, where he became interested in a "slow
virus" infection called Creutzfeld-Jakob disease
(CJD) and the seemingly related diseaseskuru
of the Fore people of New Guinea and scrapie of sheep.
Prusiner joined the faculty there in 1974 and continued
his studies on scrapie. Finally in 1982, he published
a paper in which he claimed to have isolated the scrapie-causing
agent. This agent, which he termed a "prion,"
was not like other known pathogens, such as viruses
and bacteria, because it consisted only of protein
and lacked the nucleic acid having genetic information.
Prusiner's paper immediately set off a firestorm of
criticism, especially from virologists, but by the
mid 1990s, his discovery became widely accepted. For
this work, he received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine.
Source
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1997/
prusiner-autobio.html
Additional Readings or Websites
Home page: http://www.ucsf.edu/neurosc/faculty/neuro_prusiner.html
NINDS: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/news_and_events/
pressrelease_prions_ 100697.htm?type=archived
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Stetten, DeWitt, Jr. (1909-1990)
American biochemist and medical educator
DeWitt Stetten, Jr., informally known
as Hans, received his A.B. from Harvard in 1930 and
his M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians
and Surgeons in 1934. After his internship and residency
at Bellevue Hospital in New York, he returned to Columbia
University to study biochemistry. He received his Ph.D.
in 1940. Stetten had taught biochemistry at Columbia
for nine years before he was appointed assistant professor
in biological chemistry at the Harvard Medical School
in 1947. The following year he accepted the position
of chief of the division of nutrition and physiology
of the Public Health Research Institute of New York
City.
In 1954 Stetten came to the National Institute of Arthritis
and Metabolic Diseases as director of its intramural
research program. Eight years later he left NIAMD to
become the first dean of the Rutgers Medical School,
but he came back to NIH in 1970 as director of the National
Institute of General Medical Sciences. He also served
as NIH deputy director for science from 1974 to 1979,
and was instrumental in creating the NIH's Museum of
Medical Research in 1987. The museum was named after
him.
His main scientific contribution was in the study of
gout, a metabolic disease marked by a painful inflammation
of the joints, but perhaps he is best known for his
leadership in the drafting of guidelines on genetic
engineering research in 1976. He was a member of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Source
NIH Almanac: http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/historical/deputy_
directors.htm#stetten
Additional Readings or Websites
J. Edwin Seegmiller. "DeWitt Stetten, Jr."
Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
71 (1997): 332-45. http://stills.nap.edu/html/biomems/dstetten.pdf
Victoria A. Harden. "Present at the creation.
The first five years of the Stetten Museum."
Caduceus 8 (1992): 46-53.
NLM finding aid: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/
ead/stetten.html
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Vagelos,
P. Roy (1929-) American biochemist
and businessman
Vagelos received his A.B. from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1950 and his M.D. from Columbia University
in 1954. After his internship and residency at the Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston, he came to the National
Heart Institute in 1956. There he launched a new career
as a research scientist under the guidance of the biochemist
Earl Stadtman. He was a co-discoverer of the role of
the acetyl carrier protein in fatty acid synthesis.
Vagelos left NIH in 1966 to assume the chairmanship
of the department of biological chemistry in the School
of Medicine at Washington University, St. Louis. He
continued to work on fatty acid biosynthesis and metabolism
and expanded his research to the synthesis of complex
lipids and the role of cholesterol in the biochemistry
of the cell. In 1975, Vagelos was persuaded to lead
basic research at Merck & Company, starting a
new career in drug discovery. Later he served as chairman
and CEO of this company. Under his direction, the
company expanded its philanthropic efforts as well
as its pharmaceutical research. He is a member of
the National Academy of Sciences and an inductee of
the National Business Hall of Fame.
Source
Louis Galambos and Jane Eliot Sewell. Networks
of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharp
& Dohme, and Mulford, 1895-1995. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Additional Readings or Websites
P. Roy Vagelos and Louis Galambos. Medicine, Science
and Merck: The First Three Careers of Roy Vagelos.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
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Van Niel, Cornelis Bernardus Kees
(1897-1985) Dutch microbiologist.
Trained under Albert Kluyver in Delft,
the Netherlands, van Niel moved to America in 1929 to
work at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University.
He made an important contribution to the study of photosynthesis
in bacteria. He showed that the green and purple sulfur
bacteria do not use water as the exclusive hydrogen
donor (as in plants), but use hydrogen sulfide and other
reduced sulfur compounds instead.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia
of Scientists, 2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia:
Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Hazel Muir, ed. Larousse Dictionary of Scientists.
New York: Larousse, 1994.
Additional Readings or Websites
H. A. Barker and Robert E. Hungate. "Cornelis
Bernardus van Niel." Biographical Memoirs
of the National Academy of Sciences 59 (1990):
388-423.
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Warburg,
Otto Heinrich (1883-1970) German
biochemist.
Educated at Berlin and Heidelburg,
Warburg worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (later
the Max Planck Institute) in Berlin from 1913, becoming
its director in 1953. He was the first to discover the
important role of iron, in association with oxidase
enzymes, in nearly all cells. In 1926 he demonstrated
that oxygen uptake by yeast is inhibited by carbon monoxide.
He is also known for the invention of the gas manometer,
named after him, which measures metabolic reactions
by the amount of oxygen or carbon dioxide taken up or
released. The "Warburg" apparatus became essential
in the investigation of metabolic pathways and was used
in a number of important discoveries, including Hans
Krebs's citric acid cycle. Warburg was awarded the 1931
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but as a Jew
was prevented from accepting it by Hitler.
Source
John Daintith, et al. eds. Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists,
2nd ed. Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1994.
Hazel Muir, ed. Larousse Dictionary of Scientists. New York: Larousse,
1994.
Additional Readings or Websites
Nobel e-Museum: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1931/warburg-bio.html
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Winogradsky, Sergey Nikolaevich
(1856-1953) (also spelled Vinogradsky)
Russian microbiologist
Winogradsky received his M.A. from St.
Petersburg University in 1884, and became affiliated
with the Institute of Experimental Medicine at St. Petersburg
(1891-1912). Later he directed agricultural research
in the Ukraine, and was appointed director of agricultural
microbiology at the Pasteur Institute in 1922. His most
important studies include the morphological variability
of microbes, the discovery of microbes' capacity for
chemosynthesis, and the creation and development of
the bases for ecological and soil microbiology.
Source
James F. Mauer, et al., eds. Concise Dictionary
of Scientific Biography. New York: Charles Scribner
& Sons, 1981.
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