Biography of Samner

Published on June 23, a Nobel laureates: James Sumner. Ru, as a chemist lost his working hand, was able to do what other experimenters could not do, as the ex -wife of the future Nobeliat became a famous writer and who had changed anyone, a German or American, tells a new issue of the section “How to get a Nobel”. The wording of the Nobel Committee: “For opening the phenomenon of enzymes crystallization” For his discovery that enzymes can be Crystallized.

Namely, this was a successful farmer and manufacturer Charles Sumner, who took Elizabeth Kelly as his wife. In such a family, James Batcheller Sumner was born near Boston. The Town Hall in the hometown of Samner, Canton when James turned 17, a tragic case occurred with him, which was supposed to put an end to his career as an experimenter. The young man went hunting with a friend, and a friend instead of game got into Samner.

In the left, “working” hand, James was left -handed. The brush had to be amputated, but perhaps the main quality of our hero was manifested here - perseverance, one might say that stubbornness was eventually decisive in the receipt of the Nobel Prize. Sumner began to painlessly learn to own his right hand. As a result, he played a notorious tennis and billiards, shot from a gun.

And he decided to become an electrical engineer. When Samner was 19, he entered Harvard and realized that his passion was chemistry. However, in the year, when Sumner graduated from one of the leading universities in the United States, he went to engage in family business to the factory of his uncle, Sumner Knitted Padding Company. Gradually, Sumner got involved in the “Paper Chemistry” about the experiment, he did not think, and also returned to Harvard in the year to tighten his knowledge of physiology and chemistry.

And there, during the “second coming to Harvard”, he was very lucky: he began to make his phd under the guidance of a wonderful Swede, who moved to the United States, Otto Knuta Folin, who worked for many where - from the hospital for the same Harvard to the same Harvard. Otto Folin in his biochemical laboratory Folin was a magnificent biochemist, an analyst chemist who made a lot to develop the concept of protein metabolism.

And it was Folin who gave us Sumner-experimenter. Seeing that one-armed with the “non-working” right has its limb with a virtuoso than the other phd-students for two, he convinced his graduate student that this was enough to do experiments. In the year, Sumner, led by Folin, became the PHD, defending the dissertation about the formation of urea in the body, and plunged into science, in the chemistry of enzymes in parallel and family life: Sumner married a medical student of Sid Rickets.

They had four children, they divorced in the year, the wife left the surname Sumner and it was under her that became a famous American novelist, according to the works of which the famous films were shot. For example, "Pinks". And Sumner married twice more. The history of the discovery of enzymes, they also told Eduard Scanner in an article about this Nobel laureate in chemistry of the year and reminded the article about the colleague of Sumner on the prize of the year, John Nectron.

No one succeeded in highlighting enzymes in its pure form. Even Richard Wilstetter failed, and this, by the way, came back to Samner. The fact is that the authority of the great German chemist, Nobel laureate of the year, a researcher of chlorophyll and other dyes, was indisputable. And he pressed on those timid attempts to declare enzymes with proteins.

And if Wilstetter said that “enzymes are not protein, and don’t understand what, and unknowable”, then we open the textbooks, we write: “Enzymes. Do not understand what. In these conditions, since the year, Sumner began to try to highlight in its purest form, crystallize the enzyme urease, which hydrolyzes urea, remember the theme of the phd dissus? The structure of Ureaza to do what everyone considered it impossible, Samner spent nine years.

Nevertheless, in the year he managed to clean the enzyme, mix it with acetone, and, cooling the mixture, get protein crystals. What did Wilshtetter say to this? That's right: this cannot be, this one -armed American does not know how. Only in the year Northrop crossed Pepsin and published an article on Science next year. It went. The German genius Wilshtetter, who was not inferior to Samner, did not give up for the longest time.

It may be good that a more age -old chemist did not live to the Nobel Prize of his opponent. Representing the Khimikov Nobeliats, Arne Tiselius from the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences said that "the results obtained by James Samner indicate the innovative work, which first convinced the researchers that the enzymes are substances that can be distinguished in a pure form in a tangible amount." A little later, the award ceremony, which, as we recall, is held on December 4, on the day of the death of Alfred Nobel, Sumner gave his Nobel lecture.

But these words even more convinced me that if this attempt could be successful, it should be undertaken, ”said the laureate with a sense of superiority. Absolutely deserved.By the way, he did not deny himself the pleasure at the very beginning of the lecture to get off the richard Wilsteter who had been driving him for so many years: “Now it was not a problem to highlight and draw an enzyme, but it was very difficult 20 years ago.

There were several reasons for that. One is the inertia of ideas. The other is the authority of the Vilstetter group, who believed that enzymes are neither proteins, no carbohydrates, nor lipids, and are generally kept in animals and plants in vanishingly low concentrations. ” And then he called Wilstetter and his erroneous opinion by a block on the path of correct ideas in chemistry.

Well, and Sumner had the right to this. He recruited his opponent faithfully, amazing hard work and filigree technology of his “non -working” right hand. Did you like the material? Add indicator. Ru in "My sources" Yandex. News and read us more often.