Phoebus LeveneBorn 25 Feb 1869; died 6 Sep 1940 at age 71.Phoebus Aaron Theodor Levene was a Russian-American chemist who was a pioneer in the study of nucleic acids. In 1909, he found that the carbohydrate present in nucleic acid from yeast is the pentose sugar ribose. In 1929, he succeeded in identifying the carbohydrate in the nucleic acid from the thymus of an animal. It is also a pentose sugar but lacks one oxygen atom of ribose and was therefore called deoxyribose. These were named ribonucleic and deoxyribonucleic acids (RNA and DNA). Levene also determined how the nucleic acid components combine to form the nucleotides and how the nucleotides combine in chains. Later discoveries showed DNA and RNA to be key elements in the maintenance of life. |
