Famous Biochemists and their Works

Frederick Sanger was a British biochemist, well known for his groundbreaking research on aspects of biochemistry, which have influenced generations of research and progress in fields of biology and chemistry. He is the only Briton to have won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry twice, also one of the only two people overall to have won the Nobel Prize in the same category. His research on the insulin molecule revolutionized the study of proteins and landed him the first of his two Nobel Prizes. After his first Nobel Prize, he started researching at the Medical Research Council (MRC) which housed better facilities to carry forward his research. Surrounding himself with the brightest minds and collaborators, he shifted his focus towards genome studies after meeting Francis Crick and other researchers studying DNA. He continued studying RNA and DNA sequencing and developed a technique for sequencing DNA that came to be known as the ‘Sanger Method’, which later on, got automated and computerized and ended up being used in the ‘Human Genome Project’. He received his second Nobel Prize jointly with Walter Gilbert. They were credited for their immense contributions in research regarding the base sequences found in nucleic acids.

Arthur Kornberg was an American biochemist, born in New York City in early twentieth century. His initial aim was to become a doctor, but while studying for his medical degree, he began to take interest in research and started a survey to see if jaundice was common among medical students. The paper, which was published a year after he earned his MD, caught the attention of the Director of National Institutes of Health. On his invitation, Kornberg joined NIH and served there for eleven years; in-between he took breaks to update his knowledge on enzymes. Later he began his teaching career as a professor at Washington University, but continued with his research. Here he was able to isolate DNA polymerizing enzyme, which earned him Nobel Prize three years later..

Friedrich Wöhler was born in Eschersheim. In 1823 Wöhler finished his study of medicine in Heidelberg at the laboratory of Leopold Gmelin, who arranged for him to work under Jöns Jakob Berzelius in Stockholm, Sweden. Wöhler is regarded as a pioneer in organic chemistry as a result of his (accidentally) synthesizing urea in the Wöhler synthesis in 1828.This discovery has become celebrated as a refutation of vitalism, the hypothesis that living things are alive because of some special "vital force".Wöhler was also known for being a co-discoverer of beryllium, silicon and silicon nitride, as well as the synthesis of calcium carbide, among others. In 1834, Wöhler and Justus Liebig published an investigation of the oil of bitter almonds. They proved by their experiments that a group of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms can behave like an element, take the place of an element, and be exchanged for elements in chemical compounds.

Marshall W. Nirenberg was an American biochemist and geneticist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for "breaking the genetic code." He also won several other prestigious awards for his contributions to genetics and biochemistry. Born in New York City, he developed an early interest in biology. As a young man he attended the University of Florida at Gainesville from where he earned his B. Sc. and M. Sc. degrees in Zoology before working for his Ph. D. degree from the Department of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan. He eventually became a research biochemist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he initially focused his research on DNA, RNA and protein. In collaboration with H. Matthaei he demonstrated that messenger RNA is required for protein synthesis and that synthetic messenger RNA preparations can be used to decipher various aspects of the genetic code. His groundbreaking research led to his appointment as the head of the Section of Biochemical Genetics at the National Heart Institute, a position he served in until his death decades later.

James Batcheller Sumner was born at Canton, Mass., on Nov. 19, 1887.. In 1937, he was given a Guggenheim Fellowship; he went to Uppsala and worked in the laboratory of Professor The Svedberg for five months. He was awarded the Scheele Medal in Stockholm in the same year. When Northrop, of the Rockefeller Institute, obtained crystalline pepsin, and subsequently other enzymes, it became clear that Sumner had devised a general crystallization method for enzymes. The opponents gradually admitted Sumner's and Northrop's claims - Willstätter last of all - and the crowning recognition came in 1946 when the Nobel Prize was awarded to Sumner and Northrop. In 1948, Sumner was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (USA). 

In 1962 James Watson (b. 1928), Francis Crick (1916–2004), and Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004) jointly received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their 1953 determination of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Wilkins’s colleague Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958), who died of cancer at the age of 37, was not so honored because the  Nobel Prize can only be shared by three scientists.The molecule that is the basis for heredity, DNA, contains the patterns for constructing proteins in the body, including the various enzymes. A new understanding of heredity and hereditary disease was possible once it was determined that DNA consists of two chains twisted around each other, or double helixes, of alternating phosphate and sugar groups, and that the two chains are held together by hydrogen bonds between pairs of organic bases—adenine (A) with thymine (T), and guanine (G) with cytosine (C). Modern biotechnology also has its basis in the structural knowledge of DNA—in this case the scientist’s ability to modify the DNA of host cells that will then produce a desired product, for example, insulin.