Karl Paul Link

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Karl Paul Gerhard Link (born January 31, 1901 in La Porte , Indiana ; † November 21, 1978 in Madison , Wisconsin ) was an American biochemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison . He is best known for the discovery of coumarins .

Life

Link's parents were descendants of German immigrants; German and English were spoken in the family with ten children. Karl's brother George KK Link became professor of botany and plant pathology at the University of Chicago . Among the other siblings were a judge, a politician, a music teacher and two geologists.

Karl Paul Link was initially supposed to study medicine, but for economic reasons he took up a degree in agricultural chemistry at the University of Wisconsin – Madison , where he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1922 and a master's in 1923 . Link received his doctorate in 1925 from the plant biochemist William E. Tottingham . As a postdoctoral fellow he worked with James Irvine at the University of St Andrews in Scotland on carbohydrate chemistry, with Fritz Pregl in Graz in Austria on microchemistry and with Paul Karrer at the University of Zurich in Switzerland on organic chemistry . In 1927 Link became Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in 1928 Associate Professor . In 1930 he became the first professor of biochemistry there , where he also initially dealt with the chemistry of carbohydrates. From 1934 Link turned to coumarins , but retained his lifelong interest in the chemistry of carbohydrates.

In 1930 Link married Elizabeth Feldman. The couple had three sons. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Link was considered an original because of his extravagant clothes with bow ties, flannel shirts, work shoes or shorts and because of his long curly hair. Short-tempered and occasionally violent behavior has been reported. Link was considered liberal and regularly sided with students in conflicts with the university administration. Link retired in 1971.

Act

Apparatus for the extraction of dicoumarol from Karl Link

Link and employees succeeded with dicumarol to recognize the agent to isolate and synthesize later that in moldy hay sweet clover the trigger of Hemorrhagic sweet clover disease is a circulatory disease affecting especially in the 1920s in the United States dairy who received such hay as fodder. When the structure of vitamin K , which was known to play an important role in the synthesis of coagulation factors , was revealed in 1939 , Link realized its similarity to dicumarol. Link subsequently tested the substance in clinical research in collaboration with the Wisconsin General Hospital and the Mayo Clinic ; dicumarol has been used clinically since 1941. Dicumarol and its derivatives (the coumarins ), of which more than 100 were researched by Link and coworkers, can be used therapeutically in humans to reduce the ability of blood to clot , especially in cardiovascular diseases.

Left employee Mark Stahmann applied for the patent for warfarin , which on the one hand was used as a rat poison but on the other hand is still one of the most frequently used anticoagulants , especially in the United States . A portion of the profits went back to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), whose name is in “Warfarin” and which Links had supported early research on coumarins.

In the more than forty years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Link supervised the theses of over 80 undergraduate and postgraduate students , including the biochemist Saul Roseman and the later Nobel Prize winner Stanford Moore .

Awards (selection)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award 1955 Winners at the Lasker Foundation (laskerfoundation.org); Retrieved June 20, 2012
  2. ^ Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award 1960 Winners at the Lasker Foundation (laskerfoundation.org); Retrieved June 20, 2012
  3. ^ Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal at the National Academy of Sciences (nasonline.org); Retrieved June 23, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Link, Karl Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Link, Karl P .; Link, Karl Paul Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH La Porte (Indiana)
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1978
Place of death Madison (Wisconsin)