Bert L. Vallee

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Bert Lester Vallee (born June 1, 1919 in Hemer ; † May 7, 2010 ) was an American physician and biochemist. He was a professor at Harvard Medical School .

Vallee studied at the University of Bern (graduated in 1938) and went to the USA in 1938 with a League of Nations scholarship . There he studied medicine at New York University with an MD degree in 1943. After the Second World War he conducted research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a joint research group in physical chemistry with Harvard Medical School (HMS) under the direction of John Edsall and Edwin Cohn . In 1955 he became an assistant professor and then a professor at the HMS. In 1954 he was founding director of the Biophysics Research Laboratory at Harvard, later the Center for Biochemical & Biophysical Sciences & Medicine (CBBSM). From 1964 to 1989 he was Paul C. Cabot Professor of Biochemistry and from 1980 had the Edgar M. Bronfman Distinguished Senior Professorship .

Among other things, he was visiting professor at the ETH Zurich and at the Weizmann Institute . He was an honorary professor at Tsinghua University and at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

From the 1950s onwards, Vallee was a pioneer in the research of metal enzymes, especially zinc enzymes, using spectroscopic methods (especially atomic emission spectroscopy , which he also developed further). One of these enzymes, alcohol dehydrogenase , led to his preoccupation with alcohol addiction. He also dealt with various questions of physical chemistry and absorption spectroscopy. He published over 600 papers.

He was a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1963) and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and was an honorary doctor of the Karolinska Institute, the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and the University of Naples. In 1981 he received the Willard Gibbs Medal , 1980 the Linderstrom-Lang Medal and 1982 the William C. Rose Award in Biochemistry. In 1988 he gave the Messenger Lecture at Cornell University and in 1992 he received the Order of Andres Bello 1st Class from Venezuela.

He was most recently a US citizen.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ Referred to as a Bachelor of Science degree on his English résumé
personal data
SURNAME Vallee, Bert L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vallee, Bert Lester
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physician and biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Hemer , Weimar Republic
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 2010