Russell marker

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Russell Earl Marker (born March 12, 1902 in Hagerstown , Maryland , † March 3, 1995 in Wernersville , Pennsylvania ) was an American chemist . He found the first industrially feasible manufacturing process for the steroid progesterone .

Live and act

Marker, the son of a farmer, studied chemistry at the University of Maryland with a bachelor's degree in 1923 and a master's degree in 1924. He never received a doctorate. After graduation, he worked for the Naval Powder Factory in Maryland and then for the Ethyl Corporation and also for the Rockefeller Institute , where he worked on the method of optical rotational dispersion . From 1934 to 1944 he taught and researched as a professor of organic chemistry at Pennsylvania State University . He was well versed in botany and pharmacology and looked for new medicines in the plant kingdom.

Yam

While at Ethyl Corporation, he and others introduced the concept of octane number . He had been working with plant steroids ( sarsasapogenin ) since 1938. He found out that the reactive side chains could be removed, leaving the steroid framework that could be used for further steroid synthesis ( marker degradation ). He used the method for the production of progesterone , a natural female sex hormone that can be used as a precursor for cortisone production , for menstrual cramps and for contraceptives . To do this, he needed a good source of the plant-based natural product (a sapogenin called diosgenin ), which he found in Mexico in the yams root ( Dioscorea mexicana). After two pharmaceutical companies were not interested (including Parker Davis, who previously co-financed his research), he decided to start his own company. He gave up his professorship, went to Mexico and collected around 10 tons of yams root, from which he made seven pounds of progesterone (then traded for $ 36,000 a pound). His supply at that time corresponded to half of the world's annual production. In 1944 he founded Syntex SA with two partners in Mexico (he received a 40 percent share), which soon afterwards also produced testosterone and grew into a company with billions in sales (later in Palo Alto ). He soon separated from Syntex and founded Botanica Mex in 1945, which he also left in 1949. His invention created a new pharmaceutical industry in Mexico.

He later moved back to Pennsylvania.

literature

  • Bolivar A. Lehmann P, R. Quintero: Russell E. Marker - Pioneer of the Mexican steroid industry, Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 50, 1973, pp. 195-199.
  • D. Lynn Loriaux: Russell Earl Marker (1902-1995), The Endocrinologist, Vol. 18, 2008, p. 107

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry on marker removal. In: Römpp Online . Georg Thieme Verlag, accessed on June 25, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Marker, Russell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marker, Russell Earl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Hagerstown , Maryland
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1995
Place of death Wernersville , Pennsylvania