Phoebus Levene

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Phoebus Levene

Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene (born February 25, 1869 as Faschel Aaronowitsch Lewin in Shagory , Ujesd Schaweli , Kaunas Governorate ; † September 6, 1940 in New York ) was a Lithuanian biochemist .

Life

Levene grew up in Saint Petersburg , where he studied at the Imperial Military Medical Academy . He received his doctorate in 1891. Because of anti-Semitic pogroms , he emigrated to the USA .

He worked as a doctor in New York and enrolled at Columbia University to do biochemical research in his spare time. He published work on the structure of sugars . In 1896 he went to the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospital. At that time he worked with chemists like Albrecht Kossel and Emil Fischer . In 1905 Levene became head of the biochemical laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research . In 1916 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , in 1932 a member of the Leopoldina . In the same year he became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

plant

Levene discovered ribose in 1909 and deoxyribose in 1929 . He coined the term nucleotide for the nucleic acid units consisting of deoxyribose, phosphoric acid residues and the four organic bases adenine , guanine , cytosine and thymine (here the deoxyribonucleic acid ) and the term nucleoside (with his assistant Walter Abraham Jacobs ).

literature

  • RS Tipson: Phoebus Aaron Theodor Levene, 1869-1940 1957 in Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry Volume 12, pp. 1-12. PMID 13617111 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.ihst.ru/projects/emigrants/levin.htm (Russian, viewed August 8, 2011)
  2. ^ Member entry by Aaron Levene at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 9, 2016.
  3. ^ PA Levene obituary at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).
personal data
SURNAME Levene, Phoebus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levene, Phoebus Aaron Theodore; Lewin, Fischel Aaronowitsch (maiden name); Levin, Fishel Aaronovich (maiden name, English transcribed)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lithuanian biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Shagory , Ujesd Shaweli , Kaunas Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1940
Place of death New York City , New York , United States