Esmond Emerson Snell
| Esmond Emerson Snell | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 22, 1914 Salt Lake City, Utah |
| Died | December 9, 2003 (aged 89) Boulder, Colorado |
| Resting place | El Cerrito, California |
| Citizenship | American |
| Education | University of Wisconsin, Madison |
| Known for | Discovery of folic acid, pyridoxal catalysis, and other vitamins and growth factors |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral advisor | William Harold Peterson |
Esmond Emerson Snell (September 22, 1914 – December 9, 2003) was an American biochemist who spent his career researching vitamins and nutritional requirements of bacteria and yeast. He is well known for his study of lactic acid-producing bacteria, developing microbiological assays for a number of key nutrients; the discovery of more than half of known vitamins has been attributed to the use of this work. He discovered several B vitamins, including folic acid, and characterized the biochemistry of vitamin B6 (also known as pyrixodal).
The fourth of five children, Snell was born in 1914 in Salt Lake City, Utah to parents who met while serving as Mormon missionaries. The family moved several times in Wyoming and Utah before settling in Provo, Utah so that the children could attend Brigham Young University. Snell became interested in chemistry during high school and went on to study chemistry at BYU; he also – "reluctantly", as he remembered later – studied secondary education as "insurance" against the unemployment of the Great Depression. After graduation, he received a scholarship to continue his studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he joined the research group of William Harold Peterson and began his long career studying nutrition and metabolism in microorganisms. Snell received his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1938 and moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Roger J. Williams.
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