Elmer McCollum

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Elmer Verner McCollum (born March 3, 1879 in Fort Scott , Kansas , † November 15, 1967 in Baltimore , Maryland ) was an American biochemist .

life and work

McCollum studied chemistry at the University of Kansas . He received his PhD from Yale University ; then he worked at the University of Wisconsin . From 1917 he was a professor at Johns Hopkins University .

His work led to the discovery of several vitamins. In 1913, together with Marguerite Davis (1887–1967) , he was credited with the discovery of vitamin A ( retinol ).

He introduced the designation of vitamins with capital letters of the alphabet in 1916.

Together with Edward Mellanby, he showed in 1919 that dogs and rats, in which rickets had been caused by artificial food, can be cured by giving them cod liver oil ( containing a lot of vitamin D ).

In 1920 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , in 1925 a member of the Leopoldina , 1945 a member of the American Philosophical Society and 1961 a Foreign Member of the Royal Society . McCollum Peak , a mountain in Antarctica, has been named in his honor since 1959 .

Publications

  • EV McCollum and M. Davis: The necessity of certain lipins in the diet during growth . In: Journal of Biological Chemistry . Volume 15, 1913, pp. 167-175.
  • EV McCollum and C. Kennedy: The dietary factors operating in the production of polyneuritis . In: Journal of Biological Chemistry . Volume 24, 1916, pp. 491-502.
  • EV McCollum, N. Simmonds, JE Becker and PG Shipley: Studies on experimental rickets. XXI. An experimental demonstration of the existence of a vitamin which promotes calcium deposition . Journal of Biological Chemistry . Volume 53, 1922, pp. 293-312.
  • EV McCollum, Elsa Orent-Keiles, Harry G. Day: The newer knowledge of nutrition . Macmillan Company, New York 1939
  • EV McCollum: A History of Nutrition: The Sequence of Ideas in Nutrition Investigations . Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1957.
  • EV McCollum: From Kansas Farm Boy to Scientist. The Autobiography of Elmer Verner McCollum . University of Kansas Press, Lawrence 1964.

literature

  • Donald R. Davis: Some Legacies of Nutrition Pioneer EV McCollum . In: Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science . 82 (3), 1979, pp. 133-145.
  • Alfred Sommer: New Imperatives for an Old Vitamin (A): VII. EV McCollum International Lectureship in Nutrition . In: Journal of Nutrition . Volume 119 No. 1 January 1989, pp. 96-100.
  • Rosenfeld, Louis: Vitamins - vitamin. The early years of discovery . In: Clinical Chemistry . Volume 43 No. 4, 1997, pp. 680-685.
  • George Wolf: The discovery of the visual function of vitamin A . In: Journal of Nutrition . Volume 131, 2001, pp. 1647-1650.
  • Robert D. Simoni, Robert L. Hill, and Martha Vaughan: Nutritional Biochemistry and the Discovery of Vitamins: the Work of Elmer Verner McCollum . In: The journal of biological chemistry . Volume 277, No. 19, 8, May 10. 2002.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otto Westphal , Theodor Wieland , Heinrich Huebschmann: life regulator. Of hormones, vitamins, ferments and other active ingredients. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1941 (= Frankfurter Bücher. Research and Life. Volume 1), S, 52.
personal data
SURNAME McCollum, Elmer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McCollum, Elmer Verner (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH at Fort Scott, Kansas
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1967
Place of death Baltimore , Maryland