Harland G. Wood

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Harland Goff Wood (born September 2, 1907 in Delavan , Minnesota , † September 12, 1991 ) was an American biochemist .

Live and act

Harland Goff Wood is a descendant of William Goffe , one of the 59 signatories to the death sentence of King Charles I of England in 1649.

Wood earned a master's degree in chemistry from Macalester College in Saint Paul , Minnesota, in 1931 . In 1935 he earned a Ph.D. from Iowa State College (later Iowa State University ) in Ames , Iowa . in bacteriology and clarified together with Chester Werkman (1893–1962) propionic acid fermentation . The incorporation of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into larger molecules by bacteria there was highly controversial at the time. As a postdoctoral fellow Wood went to WH Petersen at the University of Wisconsin , where he and the later Nobel Prize winner Edward Lawrie Tatum were able to show that microorganisms need vitamin B1 for growth.

In 1936 Wood got a position as Assistant Professor of Bacteriology at Iowa State College, where he was able to prove with 13 C O 2 - obtained from Alfred Nier - that carbon dioxide is fixed in the carboxy groups of the succinate . Building on Wood's work, Earl Evans (1910–1999) and Louis Slotin were able to show in 1940 with 11 C O 2 that CO 2 fixation also takes place in humans .

At the University of Minnesota , where Wood changed as Associate Professor of Physiology in 1943 , he investigated CO 2 fixation in animals using [ 13 C] NaHCO 3 ( sodium hydrogen carbonate ) . In 1946, Wood went to the Western Reserve University in Cleveland , Ohio as the new professor of biochemistry , which later became the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Here he made extensive use of the tracer method to elucidate various metabolic pathways. In 1965 he gave up the management of the biochemistry department, but kept a professorship and was very active scientifically even after his retirement in 1978, where he continued to deal mainly with the metabolism of carbonic acid. Further work dealt with the kinetics , structure , sequence and genetics of the transcarboxylase (TC) from propionibacteria or with the role of pyrophosphate and polyphosphates in energy metabolism .

Wood had been married to Mildred Davis since 1929. The couple had three daughters. Harland Woods Grave is located in Minnesota .

Awards (selection)

At Case Western Reverse University School of Medicine, a building is named after Wood. A lecture is held annually in his honor.

literature

  • Nicole Kresge, Robert D. Simoni, Robert L. Hill: The Discovery of Heterotrophic Carbon Dioxide Fixation by Harland G. Wood. In: Journal of Biological Chemistry 2005 280: e15. on-line
  • David A. Goldthwait, Richard W. Hanson: Harland Goff Wood. In: Biographical Memoir. National Academies Press, Washington DC 1996, pp. 393-429 (PDF, 223 kB) , online

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eli Lilly and Company-Elanco Research Award Past Laureates. (No longer available online.) In: asm.org. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016 ; accessed on April 14, 2018 (English).
  2. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter W. (PDF; 852 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Accessed April 14, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Harland Goff Wood obituary in the 1992 yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).
  4. ^ Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the National Academy of Sciences (nasonline.org); accessed on January 14, 2016
  5. ^ Past Winners - Rosenstiel Award - Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center - Brandeis University. In: brandeis.edu. Retrieved January 23, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Harland G. Wood at the National Science Foundation (nsf.gov); Retrieved May 23, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Wood, Harland G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wood, Harland; Wood, Harland Goff (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Delavan , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1991