John Howard NorthropBorn 5 Jul 1891; died 27 May 1987 at age 95.American biochemist who received (with James B. Sumner and Wendell M. Stanley) the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1946 for successfully purifying and crystallizing certain enzymes, thus enabling him to determine their chemical nature. During WW I, he conducted research on fermentation processes suitable for the industrial production of acetone and ethyl alcohol. This work led to a study of enzymes essential for digestion, respiration, and general life processes. He crystallized pepsin (1930), a digestive enzyme present in gastric juice, and found that it is a protein, thus resolving the dispute over the nature of enzymes. Using the same chemical methods, he isolated the first bacterial virus (bacteriophage), and found it is a nucleoprotein (1938). |
