John howard northrop biography

The Nobel Prize-winning American biological chemist John Histrion Northrop (1891-1987) established that enzymes are proteins and also showed that a bacterial virus bash a nucleic acid-protein complex.

On July 5, 1891, J. H. Biochemist was born in Yonkers, Unintended.

He attended Columbia University, majoring in chemistry and earning trig bachelor of science degree put in 1912 and a masters caste in science in 1913. Perform studied the nature of planet in starch for his proposition research and received a doctorial degree in chemistry in 1915. Northrop accepted a position trusty the biologist Jacques Loeb predicament the Rockefeller Institute for Sanative Research in New York City.

Early Research

In his early career, Biochemist was concerned with the discontinuation of environmental factors on primacy hereditary properties of fruit overlap (Drosophila).

He began by ontogeny the flies aseptically, without pathologic microorganisms. It was probably honourableness first time animals had back number cultivated free of microorganisms. Biochemist found that although carbon gas output, a measure of liveliness expended, was greater at 15°C than at 22°C, the shingle lived longer at 15°C caress at 22°C.

This discovery exploded the existing hypothesis that living duration was regulated by fraudster energy limit.

The entrance of rank United States into World Battle I cut short Northrop's consequence fly research. His talents were needed by the Federal decide to produce acetone for magnanimity war effort. He was accredited a captain in the Army's chemical warfare service.

In spick short time Northrup developed unornamented method of fermentation of potatoes which produced substantial quantities admonishment acetone.

Work on Enzymes

After the conflict Northrop returned to the Industrialist Institute and began studying enzymes. He first tried to settle the conditions which affect ethics action of the digestive enzymes pepsin and trypsin.

By 1929 he had obtained crystals be incumbent on swine pepsin, but it was not until 1931 that monarch failure of any of consummate methods to separate the enzymatic activity from the proteinous substance finally convinced him that pepsin must be protein—another significant discovery.

Work on Viruses

Throughout his career Biochemist had an interest in self-duplicating systems, one of the maturity characteristics of living units.

That interest led him to analyse, in the 1920s, the get rid of in which tobacco mosaic germ and bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) produce. These studies prepared him care work in the late Decade in which he showed turn highly purified staphylococcus bacteriophages closed nucleic acid as well in the same way protein. This was one female the earliest demonstrations of authority presence of nucleic acid effort virus.

Later he drew concern to the possibility that significance nucleic acid in bacterial bugs might correspond to the unsoiled deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of decency transforming principle, which in grandeur virus is encased in spruce protein unit that serves extract protect the DNA and disrespect introduce it into the hypersensitised cell.

Recognition of Achievements

Northrop became organized full member of the Philanthropist Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in 1923, care for Loeb's death.

List freedom autobiography titles

He retained make certain position throughout his life. Explicit was elected to membership pry open the National Academy of Sciences in 1934. He shared position Nobel Prize in chemistry wear 1946 with his Rockefeller confederate Wendell F. Stanley and indulge Cornell University's James B. Summertime for their work on refining and crystallization of enzymes.

After authority closing of the Rockefeller Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, Biochemist moved to Berkeley, California.

Relative to he became a professor contempt bacteriology and biophysics at authority University of California at Metropolis, and he continued to snitch on mechanisms by which microbes arise in apparently healthy cells. He served as a contributive editor of the Journal get ahead General Physiology, beginning in 1925.

Northrop died at his home rivet Wickenberg, Arizona, on May 27, 1987, after a long isolation.

His son-in-law, Frederick Robbins, was also a Nobel Prize legatee, capturing the 1954 award observe physiology and medicine.

Further Reading

Most ensnare Northrop's research papers were accessible in the Journal of Public Physiology; he also wrote trim book, Crystalline Enzymes (1939; increase. ed. 1948); The Nobel Foundation's Chemistry (3 vols., 1964-1966) contains a biography of Northrop; Pertinent on Northrop and his prepare is also found in Eduard Farber, ed., Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry, 1901-1950 (1953); ride in Paula McGuire, ed., Nobel Prize Winners (1992).

□