Allene R. Jeanes

Allene R. Jeanes (first from left) visiting President Kennedy 's 1962 Federal Woman's Award winners at the White House .

Allene Rosalind Jeanes (born July 19, 1906 in Waco , Texas , † December 11, 1995 in Urbana , Illinois ) was an American chemist ( organic chemistry ). She worked for the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture for 35 years , mainly dealing with polysaccharides such as dextrans and was the discoverer of xanthan gum .

Life

Allene Rosalind Jeanes was the daughter of Largus Elonzo and Viola Jeanes, née Herring. Her father was a shunter on the St. Louis Northwestern Railroad . She grew up in Waco, attended school here, and graduated from high school in 1924 . She then studied chemistry at Baylor University ( Bachelor 1928) and organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley ( Master 1929). She taught science for the next five years at Athens College (now Athens State University ) in the eponymous city in Alabama . In 1936 she went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received her PhD in organic chemistry in 1938 under Roger Adams . She then worked in the laboratory of Claude Hudson at the National Institutes of Health until 1940 and then for a few months with Horace S. Isbell at the National Bureau of Standards in Maryland .

In 1941 Allene R. Jeanes went to Peoria , Illinois , at the Northern Regional Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture , where she worked until her retirement in 1976. The Northern Regional Laboratory (now the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research ) is one of four research centers of the Agricultural Research Service founded in 1938 . In the 1940s, Allene R. Jeanes worked on the hydrolysis of starch . Her special focus was on the breakdown product isomaltose , for the investigation of which she obtained large quantities from the breakdown of dextran , which she produced with the help of the lactic acid bacterium Leuconostoc mesenteroides . In the 1950s she played a key role in the development of suitable microbial production processes for dextran for use as a blood substitute, and from the 1960s onwards she looked for a substitute for imported vegetable gum varieties. These natural polysaccharides are able to greatly increase the viscosity of solutions even at low concentrations and are used in the food industry as thickeners , gelling agents and stabilizers . Her team found xanthan gum as an alternative, which was obtained from sugar-containing substrates with the help of the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris and is now used in a variety of ways as a food additive E 415.

Awards

1956: Garvan-Olin Medal (American Chemical Society)
1956: Distinguished Service Award (United States Department of Agriculture)
1962: Federal Woman's Award (United States Civil Service Commission)
1968: Superior Service Award (United States Department of Agriculture)
1999: Science Hall of Fame (Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture)

literature

Gregory L. Côté, Victoria L. Finkenstadt: A History of Carbohydrate Research at the USDA Laboratory in Peoria, Illinois. (PDF) In: Bulletin for the History of Chemistry. Vol. 33, No. 2, 2008, pp. 103-111.
Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey: Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. Routledge, 2000, ISBN 978-1-135-96343-9 , pp. 1355-1359.
Tiffany K. Wayne: American Women of Science Since 1900 (Vol.1: Essays AH). ABC-Clio, 2011, ISBN 978-1-59884-158-9 , pp. 549 f.

Web links

Allene Rosalind Jeanes. Chemistry in History, Chemical Heritage Foundation. Retrieved September 23, 2014.

Individual evidence

^ Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey: Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. Routledge, 2000, pp. 1355-1359.
^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Gregory L. Côté, Victoria L. Finkenstadt: A History of Carbohydrate Research at the USDA Laboratory in Peoria, Illinois. In: Bulletin for the History of Chemistry. Vol. 33, No. 2, 2008, pp. 103-111.
^ Tiffany K. Wayne: American Women of Science Since 1900 (Vol.1: Essays AH). ABC-Clio, 2011, p. 549 f.
^ Science Hall of Fame - Chronological Order by Year of Induction. ( Memento from April 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Retrieved September 24, 2014.

personal data
SURNAME	Jeanes, Allene R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Jeanes, Allene Rosalind (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American chemist (organic chemistry)
DATE OF BIRTH	July 19, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH	Waco , Texas
DATE OF DEATH	December 11, 1995
Place of death	Urbana , Illinois

[1] Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey: Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. Routledge, 2000, pp. 1355-1359.

[Cote-2] A ^b ^c ^d Gregory L. Côté, Victoria L. Finkenstadt: A History of Carbohydrate Research at the USDA Laboratory in Peoria, Illinois. In: Bulletin for the History of Chemistry. Vol. 33, No. 2, 2008, pp. 103-111.

[Wayne-3] Tiffany K. Wayne: American Women of Science Since 1900 (Vol.1: Essays AH). ABC-Clio, 2011, p. 549 f.

[4] Science Hall of Fame - Chronological Order by Year of Induction. ( Memento from April 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Retrieved September 24, 2014.