Eugene Kennedy (biochemist)

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Eugene Kennedy, 2009

Eugene Patrick Kennedy (born September 4, 1919 in Chicago , † September 22, 2011 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ) was an American biochemist who was Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School from 1959 . The focus of his research, for which he was accepted into the National Academy of Sciences and received a Gairdner Foundation International Award , was the metabolic processes in the mitochondria , the biosynthesis and function of phospholipids, and the isolation and characterization of membrane proteins .

Life

Eugene Kennedy was born in Chicago in 1919 as the fourth of five children of five Irish emigrants and studied chemistry at DePaul University from 1937 and a doctorate at the University of Chicago from 1941 , where he studied organic chemistry and from 1947 with Albert Lester Lehninger specialized in biochemistry . After receiving his doctorate in 1949, he first moved to the University of California, Berkeley, to work with Horace Albert Barker and, in 1950, to the Harvard Medical School in Boston , where he worked with Fritz Lipmann . After he returned to the University of Chicago in 1951, he was appointed Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry in 1959 and head of the relevant department at Harvard Medical School , where he worked until 1993.

Eugene Kennedy was married from 1943 until his wife's death in 1999 and was the father of three daughters. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2011 .

Scientific work

Between 1948 and 1950, Eugene Kennedy and Albert Lehninger discovered that the citrate cycle , fatty acid oxidation and oxidative phosphorylation take place in the mitochondria of eukaryotes . With this, the two scientists clarified the essential stages of energy generation in organisms. In addition, he dealt with the biosynthesis of phospholipids and their role in the construction of biomembranes and at Harvard University with the isolation and characterization of membrane proteins .

Awards

Eugene Kennedy received the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry in 1958 , a Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1976 and the Passano Award and the Heinrich Wieland Prize in 1986 . He was also accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961 and the National Academy of Sciences three years later . Since 1993 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society .

Works (selection)

  • Eugene P. Kennedy, Albert L. Lehninger: Oxidation of Fatty Acids and Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle Intermediates by Isolated Rat Liver Mitochondria. In: Journal of Biological Chemistry . 179/1949, pp. 957-972
  • Eugene P. Kennedy, Albert L. Lehninger: The Products of Oxidation of Fatty Acids by Isolated Rat Liver Mitochondria. In: Journal of Biological Chemistry. 185/1950, pp. 275-285
  • Eugene P. Kennedy, Samuel B. Weiss: The Function of Cytidine Coenzymes in the Biosynthesis of Phospholipides. In: Journal of Biological Chemistry. 222/1956, pp. 193-214

literature

  • Nicole Kresge, Robert D. Simoni, Robert L. Hill: The Kennedy Pathway for Phospholipid Synthesis: The Work of Eugene Kennedy. In: Journal of Biological Chemistry. 280 (25 )/2005. American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, pp. E22-e24, ISSN  0021-9258
  • William T. Wickner: Retrospective: Eugene Patrick Kennedy, 1919–2011. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 108 (48 )/2011. United States National Academy of Sciences, pp. 19122/19123, ISSN  0027-8424

Further publications

Web links

  • Daniel Raben: Eugene P. Kennedy (1919–2011) Obituary in: ASBMB Today. Published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, November 2011 edition (accessed November 21, 2011)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Eugene Patrick Kennedy. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 21, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Kennedy, Eugene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kennedy, Eugene Patrick (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH September 4, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 2011
Place of death Cambridge, Massachusetts