Bernhard Witkop
| Bernhard Witkop | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 9, 1917 Freiburg, Baden, Germany |
| Died | November 22, 2010 (aged 93) |
| Alma mater | Ludwig Maximilians University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Organic Chemistry |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Doctoral advisor | Heinrich Wieland |
Bernhard Witkop (May 9, 1917 in Freiburg, Baden – November 22, 2010 in Chevy Chase, Maryland) is a German-born American organic chemist who worked for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for 37 years.
During those years, Dr. Witkop – along with his recruit, the late Dr. John Daly, and others – discovered the NIH shift, a term describing the movement of hydrogen, deuterium or tritium to adjacent carbons on aromatic rings during oxidation, a process key in developing many therapies. He also helped to develop selective methods for the non-enzymatic cleavage of proteins, which enabled the sequencing of amino acids in proteins as large as immunoglobulin, a method later used in the production of human insulin.
Dr. Witkop also helped pioneer the NIH Visiting Fellow Program. Among other foreign scientists, he began attracting visiting researchers to the program from Japan as early as 1955. He traveled frequently to Japan, where he gave talks in classical Japanese. In 1975, Witkop received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan.
“He brought in the first visiting fellow from Japan at a time when we were still in the shadow of World War II,” said Dr. Kenneth Jacobson, Chief of the NIDDK Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry. “He broke the ice.”
Other honors, among many, included election to the National Academy of Sciences (1969) and the American Philosophical Society (1999) as well as the Paul Karrer Gold Medal from the University of Zurich (1971).
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