Christian Anfinsen
| Christian B. Anfinsen | |
|---|---|
Christian B. Anfinsen in 1969
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| Born | Christian Boehmer Anfinsen, Jr. March 26, 1916 Monessen, Pennsylvania |
| Died | May 14, 1995 (aged 79) Randallstown, Maryland |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Alma mater |
Swarthmore College (BA, 1937) University of Pennsylvania (MS, 1939) Harvard Medical School (PhD, 1943) |
| Known for | Ribonuclease, Anfinsen's dogma |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1972) |
| Spouse | Florence Kenenger (1941-1978; divorced; 3 children) Libby Shulman Ely (m. 1979; 4 stepchildren) |
Christian Boehmer Anfinsen, Jr. (March 26, 1916 – May 14, 1995) was an American biochemist. He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanford Moore and William Howard Stein for work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation (see Anfinsen's dogma).
Anfinsen was born in Monessen, Pennsylvania, into a family of Norwegian American immigrants. His parents were Sophie (née Rasmussen) and Christian Boehmer Anfinsen, Sr., a mechanical engineer. The family moved to Philadelphia in the 1920s. He earned a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1937. While attending Swarthmore College he played varsity football and joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity.
In 1939, he earned a master's degree in organic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1939, The American-Scandinavian Foundation awarded Anfinsen a fellowship to develop new methods for analyzing the chemical structure of complex proteins, namely enzymes, at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1941, Anfinsen was offered a university fellowship for doctoral study in the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School. There, Anfinsen received his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1943. In 1979, he converted to Judaism, by undergoing an Orthodox conversion and that same year he quit smoking. Although Anfinsen wrote in 1985 that his feelings on religion still reflect a fifty-year period of orthodox agnosticism.
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