John Howard Northrop
| John Howard Northrop | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
July 5, 1891 Yonkers, New York, USA |
| Died | May 27, 1987 (aged 95) Wickenburg, Arizona, USA Suicide |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Institutions |
University of California, Berkeley Columbia University Rockefeller University |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Doctoral advisor | Jacques Loeb |
| Known for | Studies of enzymes |
| Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1946) Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1939) |
John Howard Northrop (July 5, 1891 – May 27, 1987) was an American biochemist who won, with James Batcheller Sumner and Wendell Meredith Stanley, the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The award was given for these scientists' isolation, crystallization, and study of enzymes, proteins, and viruses. Northrop was a Professor of Bacteriology and Medical Physics, Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley.
Northrop was born in Yonkers, New York to John Isaiah, a zoologist and instructor at Columbia University, and Alice Rich Northrop, a teacher of botany at Hunter College. His father died in a lab explosion two weeks before John H. Northrop was born. The son was educated at Yonkers High School and Columbia University, where he earned his PhD in chemistry in 1915. During World War I, he conducted research for the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service on the production of acetone and ethanol through fermentation. This work led to studying enzymes.
In 1929, Northrop isolated and crystallized the gastric enzyme pepsin and determined that it was a protein. In 1938 he isolated and crystallized the first bacteriophage (a small virus that attacks bacteria), and determined that it was a nucleoprotein. Northrop also isolated and crystallized pepsinogen (the precursor to pepsin), trypsin, chymotrypsin, and carboxypeptidase.
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