Sofia Simmonds
| Sophia S. Simmonds | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 31, 1917 |
| Died | July 27, 2007 (aged 89) New Haven, Connecticut |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Barnard College; Cornell University |
| Awards | Garvan–Olin Medal (1969) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry, microbiology |
| Institutions | Yale University |
| Doctoral advisor | Vincent du Vigneaud |
Sofia S. "Topsy" Simmonds (July 31, 1917 – July 27, 2007) was an American biochemist who studied amino acid metabolism and peptide metabolism in E. coli. Following training with Vincent du Vigneaud at Cornell University, she spent most of her career at Yale University. After decades as a researcher and then associate professor there, Simmonds became a full professor of biochemistry in 1975, and later served as Associate Dean of Yale College. With her husband Joseph Fruton, Simmonds coauthored the influential General Biochemistry, the first comprehensive biochemistry textbook. Simmonds received the American Chemical Society's Garvan Medal in 1969.
Sofia, who went by the childhood nickname "Topsy" throughout her life, was the second child of Lionel Julius Simmonds and Clara Gottfried Simmonds. She was raised in Manhattan, where her father was the superintendent of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. After graduating high school, she met biochemistry graduate student Joseph Fruton in 1933; the two began courting and they married in 1936. After high school and several months as a laboratory assistant at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons (where Fruton was earning his PhD), Simmonds attended Barnard College where she earned a BA in chemistry in 1938. After that, she started graduate work in the lab of Hans Thacher Clarke (who had been Fruton's advisor), but soon transferred to Cornell Medical College to work under Vincent du Vigneaud. She worked in Vigneaud's laboratory on the study of transmethylation, completing her PhD in biochemistry in 1942 and continuing as a research associate until she and Fruton moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1945.
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