A Selected Chronological Bibliography
of Biology and Medicine
Part 4A
1925 — 1936
Compiled by James Southworth Steen, Ph.D.
Delta State University
Dedicated to my loving family
This document celebrates those
secondary authors and laboratory technicians without whom most of this great
labor of discovery would have proved impossible.
Please forward any editorial comments to: James S. Steen, Ph.D., Professor
Emeritus, DSU Box 3262, Cleveland, MS 38733. jsteen08@bellsouth.net
1925
"The
key to every biological problem must finally be sought in the cell."
Edmund Beecher Wilson (1764).
“When
we consider what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it is no
exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision
of this generation as to the relations between them.” Alfred North Whitehead (1739).
“Almost
all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first
proposed.” Alfred North Whitehead (1739).
Richard
Adolf Zsigmondy (AT-DE) received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his
demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of colloid solutions and for the
methods he used, which have since become fundamental in modern colloid
chemistry. He developed a dark field ultra-microscope that could detect particles
with diameters below the wavelengths of visible light.
Ronald
Aylmer Fisher (GB-AU) invented the statistical method known as analysis of variance (523).
Walter
S. Abbott (US) developed a method for computing the effectiveness of
insecticides (2).
William
S. Hoffman (US) isolated adenine nucleotide in crystalline
form from pig blood (732).
John
Mason Gulland (GB) and Robert Robinson (GB) worked out the structure of
morphine (649).
Treat
Baldwin Johnson (US) and Robert D. Cogshill (US) discovered the occurrence of
5-methylcytosine in nature (tubercle bacteria) (801).
Rollin
Douglas Hotchkiss (US) and Gerard R. Wyatt (CA) discovered 5-methylcytosine in
plant and animal tissues (756; 1797).
Gottfried
Koller (DE), Earle Bryant Perkins (US), Theodore Snook (US), and Benjamin
Kropp (US) found that there is produced in the eyestalks of crustaceans a hormone
which, when carried in the blood stream, is effective in inducing chromatophore
changes. Koller named this hormone contractin (868-870; 1230-1232).
Bernhard
Zondek (DE-IL) and Benno Brahn (DE) isolated an estrogenic hormone from the
ovarian follicle (1809; 1812).
Edouard
Chatton (FR) first used the terms prokaryote and eukaryote in his 1925 paper
when he suggested that the most significant taxonomic distinction among life
forms today is not between plants and animals but between cells with nuclei,
eukaryotes, and cells without them, prokaryotes. Pro means before and eu
means true, karyote refers to a nut or kernel (248; 249).“Protozoologists
agree today in considering the flagellated autotrophs the most primitive of the
Protozoa possessing a true nucleus, Eukaryotes (a group which also includes the
plants and the Metazoans), because they alone have the power to completely
synthesize their protoplasm from a mineral milieu. Heterotrophic organisms are
therefore dependent on them for their existence as well as on chemotrophic
Prokaryotes and autotrophs (nitrifying and sulphurous bacteria, Cyanophyceae.”
This is a translation by Jan Sapp (CA) from the 1938 reference (1351).
Eukaryotes
are now placed in the domain Eucarya while prokaryotes are placed in either the
domain Bacteria or Archaea.
André
Michel Lwoff (FR) used the word eukaryote (1012).
Ellsworth C. Dougherty (US) proposed the prokaryotic-eukaryotic
dichotomy. He used the words eukaryon (Greek: true kernel) for the nucleus of
“higher organisms” and prokaryon (Greek: before kernel) for the moneran
nucleus. (422).
Roger
Yate Stanier (CA) and Cornelis Bernardus Kees van Niel (NL-US) later defined
bacteria by conceptualizing two new biological entities, "prokaryotes"
and "eukaryotes." They argued that the cells of all living things
were either prokaryotic or eukaryotic, depending on their pattern of cellular
organization. They defined eukaryotes as cells containing membrane-bound structures
called organelles, the most important of which was the nucleus. By this
definition, all cells of multi-cellular plants and animals were eukaryotes.
Cells that lacked membrane-bound cell nuclei, like bacteria and blue-green
algae, were designated prokaryotes. The term prokaryote implicitly elevated
bacteria to equivalent biological status with all other organisms, to be known
as eukaryotes (1489). This represents the resurrection and
embellishment of an idea first conceived by Edouard Chatton (FR).
Robert
George Everitt Murray (CA) proposed Procaryotae as a taxon “at the highest
level” and described it as “a kingdom of microbes…characterized by the possession
of nucleoplasm devoid of basic protein and not bounded from cytoplasm by a
nuclear membrane.” He suggested Eucaryotae as a possible taxon at the same
level to include other protists, plants, and animals (1155).
Erwin Broun Fred (US), Ira Lawrence Baldwin (US) and Elizabeth McCoy
(US) published the definitive text on nitrogen fixation (547).
Agnes
Robertson Arber (GB) authored Monocotyledons;
a Morphological Study, which developed the thesis, first suggested by Augustin
Pyramus de Candolle (CH), that the monocot leaf is derived from a dicot petiole
(phyllode theory) (50).
Thurlow
Nelson (US) implicated the ctenophore Mnemiopsis as a predator on oyster
larvae in inland coastal waterways along the New Jersey coast (1164).
Emil-Karl Frey (DE) observed in 1925 a considerable reduction in
arterial blood pressure when he injected human urine into dogs. Unlike many
other contemporary scientists, he did not attribute this effect to a toxic
action of urine, but rather as the specific activity of an unknown substance
with potential biological functions (553; 554).
Heinrich Kraut (DE), Emil-Karl Frey (DE) and Eugen Werle (DE) reasoned
that, “It is a substance that probably originates from several organs, is
eliminated by the kidneys and has a pronounced cardioactive and vasoactive
effect: a substance that is assigned the role of a hormone in the organism”.
This F-substance was then called kallikrein,
since it was considered to have originated in the pancreas (Greek synonym:
kallikreas) (877).
Eugen
Werle (DE), W. Götze (DE), A. Keppler (DE), and M. Grunz (DE) identified kallikrein as a proteolytic enzyme
(‘ferment’) that liberates the biologically highly active, basic polypeptide
‘DK’ or kallidin (i.e lys-bradykinin)
from a blood plasma protein called kallidinogen
or kininogen (H- and L-kininogen) (1724; 1725). Its name was later
changed to kallidin and that of the
precursor to kallidinogen. This work
laid the foundation for understanding the system
that we refer to today as the kallikrein-kinin system (cascade).
George
Edward Briggs (GB) and John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (GB-IN) made important
refinements in the theory of enzyme kinetics with their steady-state derivation
of the single-substrate enzyme saturation curve (175).
Earl
Perry Cark (US) and James Bertram Collip (CA) reported an important improvement
in the methodology for the determination of blood serum calcium (263).
Cyrus
Hartwell Fiske (US) and Yellapragada Subbarow (IN-US) developed a colorimetric
method useful for the detection of phosphorus in organic material (528).
Evert
Gorter (NL) and Francois Grendel (NL) determined that the area of the
monomolecular film formed on a Langmuir trough by the membrane lipids was
double the surface area of the erythrocytes from which the lipids had been
extracted, suggesting that the cell membrane is bimolecular (632). This was the first evidence that cell
membranes are bi-layered.
Hans
Molisch (CZ), in 1925, obtained the evolution of oxygen by illuminating
preparations of dried leaves (1128).
Gottfried
Samuel Fraenkel (DE-US) discovered that statocysts on jellyfish medussa respond
to gravity (541).
William
Rowan (CH-GB-CA) tested the effect of photoperiodism on migratory drive and reproductive
histology in birds. He proved that the annual cycle of changing day-length is
the major stimulus for bird migration and is associated with profound
physiological change within birds (1320-1324). Note:
Before Rowan, it was unknown what environmental cues animals used to time the
seasonal changes in their biology. See, Piersma, 1998.
Robert
Kyle Burns, Jr. (US) established the adequacy of the hormonal theory of sex
determination as a general mechanism for vertebrates (201-206). See Frank Rattray Lillie, 1916.
Carl Ferdinand Cori
(CZ-US) described the rapid absorption of galactose in the intestine, galactose
being the most active sugar in this respect (301).
Josef
von Halban (AT) and Robert Koehler (AT) proved that cessation of internal
secretion of the corpus luteum is
responsible for the menstrual bleeding in humans (1644).
Ernest
Henry Starling (GB) and Ernest Basil Verney (GB) isolated dog kidneys, which
they supplied with oxygenated blood at controlled flow rates, temperature, and
pressure. They found they could produce regular flow rates of normal urine.
From their analysis of the urine they determined that the glomeruli generate a
protein-free filtrate. They artificially blocked tubular metabolic activity
with hydrocyanic acid, collected ureter filtrate, and found that water,
chloride, bicarbonate, and glucose are normally reabsorbed from the glomerular filtrate
by the tubular cells. They also found that pituitrin
(a proprietary preparation of the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland)
influenced the re-absorption mechanisms for water and chloride and that without
it the mammalian kidney reverted to a urine characteristic of fish and
amphibian classes (1497). Note: Vasopressin would later be
isolated as the active ingredient in pituitrin.
Edwin
B. Hart (US), Harry Steenbock (US), Conrad Arnold Elvehjem (US), and James
Waddell (US) demonstrated that when rabbits were induced into a state of anemia
by milk diet, the addition of ferric salts alone was insufficient to bring
about recovery. They discovered that the additional presence of copper is
necessary for the animals to synthesize the pyrrol nucleus of hemoglobin (689; 690).
Louis
Sigurd Fridericia (DK) and Eiler Holm (DK) demonstrated that vitamin A
(retinol) is necessary for normal night vision in rats. They also found that
both the retinas of A-deficient rats and of rats whose eyes had been strongly
illuminated were depleted of visual purple (557).
Gaston
Ramon (FR) and Pierre A. Descombey (FR) produced a tetanus vaccine from
formaldehyde-treated tetanus toxin (1266).
Simeon
Burt Wolbach (US), Otto A. Bessey (US), and Percy R. Howe (US) concluded that
vitamin A (retinol) deficiency in diets led to improper development of teeth
and retardation of the growth of the skeleton and that vitamin C deficiency led
to a deficiency of formation of intercellular cement substance leading to
fragility of blood capillaries (1773-1778).
J.H.C.
Ruyter (NL) was the first to call attention to the structural peculiarities of
unique cells lining the afferent arteriole as it approaches the glomerulus in
mice and rats. He suggested that by swelling these cells could occlude the
lumen of the afferent arterioles and thereby regulate blood flow to the
glomerular capillaries (1331).
Charles
Oberling (FR) also reported a distinct group of cells at the same site, this
time in the human kidney (1185).
Norbert
Oscar Jean Goormaghtigh (BE) named the juxtaglomerular apparatus and suggested that it might have an
endocrine function (621).
Norbert
Oscar Jean Goormaghtigh (BE) and Keith S. Grimson (US) confirmed that
the modified cells in the afferent arteriolar wall of the juxtaglomerular apparatus are endocrine in nature (620; 622-628).
George
White Pickering (US), Myron Prinzmetal (US), Juan Carlos Fasciolo (AR),
Bernardo Alberto Houssay (AR), and Alberto C. Taquini (AR) rediscovered renin from the kidney as an inducer of
hypertension (488; 1239). See
Tigerstedt, 1898.
Eduardo
Braun-Menéndez (AR), Juan Carlos Fasciolo (AR), Luis Federico Leloir (AR), Juan
M. Muñoz (AR), and Irvine Heinly Page (US) determined that renin is an enzyme which acts on a substrate (hypertensinogen) in the plasma converting it to a decapeptide (angiotensin I) (166; 1197).
Leonard
T. Skeggs, Jr. (US), Kenneth E. Lentz (US), Joseph R. Kahn (US), Norman P.
Shumway (US), and Kenneth R. Woods (US) determined that a serum enzyme (angiotensinase) converts the inactive
decapeptide (angiotensin I) to the
active octapeptide (angiotensin II) (1448). This activity occurs primarily in the
lungs.
William
Stanley Peart (GB) demonstrated that the juxtaglomerular apparatus cells
produce renin within the kidney (1224).
Hugo Fricke (US) measured the electrical capacitance of the
surface membrane of erythrocytes, using a high-frequency alternating current
bridge (555; 556).
Edward
M. East (US) and Albert J. Mangelsdorf (US), using Nicotiana tabacum as
their research material, laid the foundation for understanding gametophytic
self-incompatibility (434).
Thomas
Hunt Morgan (US), Calvin Blackman Bridges (US) and Alfred Henry Sturtevant (US)
showed that chromosome imbalance could produce intersex types in Drosophila.
They
also observed that occasionally crosses produced female-biased sex ratios, a
clear violation of Mendel’s first law. Daughters from the distorted brood
produced an equal number of males and females, but half of their sons produced
female-biased sex ratios, whatever the origin of their mates. The remaining
grandsons produced normal sex ratios and were shown to have lost the trait (1136).
David
Policansky (US) and John Ellison (US) showed that in the Drosophila males producing biased sex ratio offspring there is a
high mortality among sperm bearing the Y chromosome. They concluded that in
some way a gene on the X chromosome kills sperm bearing a Y chromosome (1248).
Felix
Bernstein (DE) proposed that the human ABO blood group is inherited in a
multiple allele pattern (123).
Hermann
Joseph Muller, Jr. (US) reported on the mental traits and heredity as studied
in a case of identical twins reared apart (1149).
Horatio
H. Newman (US), Frank N. Freeman (US), and Karl J. Holzinger (US) presented a
large study of heredity and environment in the development of 100 pairs of twins (1169).
Sears
P. Doolittle (US) and Lewis Ralph Jones (US) demonstrated that Macrosiphum pisi Harris (pea aphid) acts
as a vector for pea mosaic virus (418).
Henri
Vallée (FR), Henri Carré (FR), Paul Rinjard (FR), Otto Waldmann (DE), K. Kobe
(DE), Gottfried Pyl (DE), Karl Otto Hobohm (DE), Hubert Moehlmann (DE), and
H.S. Frenkel (NL) produced vaccines for
foot-and-mouth disease (549; 550; 1603; 1604; 1678; 1679).
Carl
Hamilton Browning (GB) defined substances that incite the formation of antibodies
and react with them as antigens (183).
A
smallpox epidemic emerged in Milwaukee, Wisconsin resulting in 386 cases, of
whom 87 people died (about 23%). Of the 386 cases, 327 had never been
vaccinated, 46 had been vaccinated 10 or more years previously, 11 had been
vaccinated more than 5 and less than 10 years previously, 2 had an uncertain
vaccination history, and none had been vaccinated within the previous 5 years.
Health workers performed about 400,000 vaccinations during the epidemic, and
officials enforced quarantine measures and isolation of those infected (1089).
John
Cunningham (GB), working in India, found that the organism, Borrelia carteri, occurs in two
antigenic varieties in human infections of relapsing
fever (335). John Cunningham (GB), J.H. Theodore (GB),
and A.G.L. Fraser (GB) extended the number of antigenic varieties to nine (336).
William
George Savage (GB) and Philip Bruce White (GB) laid the groundwork for
antigenic analysis of the Salmonella
group (1354).
Fritz
Kaufmann (DK) greatly extended and refined Savage and White’s work (823).
Gaston
Ramon (FR) demonstrated that it was possible to augment the antitoxin response
to diphtheria and tetanus by administering vaccines with
pyogenic bacteria or with various additional compounds (his favorite substance
was tapioca). This represents the first occasion on which immunological
adjuvants were used. Ramon called them adjuvantes
et stimulantes de l’immunite (1265). Note: This discovery indicated a
need to involve an inflammatory reaction at the antigen‐injection site to
enhance the immune response.
Jules
T. Freund (AT-HU-US), Jordi Casals-Ariet (ES-US), and Elizabeth Page Hosmer
(US) proposed to add inactivated Mycobacterium
tuberculosis to an oil-water emulsion, leading to the popular Freund’s adjuvant (551).
Jules
T. Freund (AT-HU-US) and Katherine McDermott (US) made a variation in oil
adjuvants, which allowed them to be used with any antigen. They emulsified
water in oil with the assistance of a water-miscible lanolin-like material to
incorporate both dried inactivated tubercle bacilli and the target antigen in a
single aggregate preparation. This was the original
Freund’s complete adjuvant that provided a method for inducing antibody
formation and cellular responses to substances that are weakly antigenic (552).
Porter
Warren Anderson, Jr. (US) and David Hamilton Smith (US), Richard B. Johnston,
Jr. (US), Michael E. Pichichero (US), Richard A. Insel (US), Robert Frank Betts
(US), and Ronald J. Eby (US) made the first polysaccharide-conjugate vaccines
against Haemophilus influenzae to be
tested in adults and infants (37; 38). They went on to develop a vaccine, which
was a commercial success.
Louis
P. Rodriques (US), John B. Robbins (US) Rachel Schneerson (US), James C. Parke,
Jr. (US), Clara Bell (US), James J. Schlesselman (US), Ann Sutton (US), Zhen
Wang (US), Gerald Schiffman (US), Arthur Karpas (US), and Joseph Shiloach (US)
studied the antigenicity of the Haemophilus
influenzae type b (Hib) polysaccharide then developed a clinically
acceptable method of binding this polysaccharide to a medically useful protein,
tetanus toxoid to form a conjugate vaccine. In sequential studies, their
Hib-tetanus conjugate elicited protective levels in mice, rabbits, young rhesus
monkeys, and then in human adults, children, and infants. Their achievement
opened the door to their and others' development of conjugate vaccines for
other bacterial pathogens whose surface polysaccharide could serve as a
protective antigen (1308; 1371; 1372).
Francoise
Audibert (FR), Louis A. Chedid (FR), Pierre Lefrancier (FR), Jean Choay (FR),
and Edgar Lederer (FR) revealed the smallest active adjuvant structure derived
from the bacterial peptidoglycan, namely, the muramyl dipeptide (63).
Charles
A. Janeway, Jr. (US), in light of the function of adjuvants, redefined the
immune response. What used to be defined as nonspecific immunity was renamed
innate immunity. Innate immunity and inflammation are more or less two names
for a similar mechanism, namely, the defense of the host against infectious or
sterile insults (786).
William
C. Boeck (US) and Jaroslav Drbohlav (US) were the first to develop in vitro cultures of Endamoeba histolytica. They grew it in a diphasic egg slant medium
they developed for isolation of intestinal flagellates (149).
Harold
Robert Dew (AU) reported the histogenesis of the hydatid parasite (Taenia
echinococcus) in the pig. He gave a very complete account of
the earliest stages of development of the hydatid and of the tissue changes set
up in the liver (392).
Alfred
Stock (DE) wrote about the danger of mercury vapor and concluded that mercury
is a poison, which can accumulate in the tissues over a considerable period of
time (1510).
Martha
Schmidtmann (DE) by following the spread of dye in cardiac cells presented the
first evidence for a direct intercellular pathway permeable to molecules (1369).
Walther
Vogt (DE) prepared a fate map that
showed where the cells on the surface of an early gastrula would be in the
later embryo. That is, he determined the destiny, or fate, of the gastrula
cells (1625; 1626).
Nicole Le Douarin (FR), Claude Le Lièvre
(FR), and Marie-Aimée Teillet (FR) used chick-quail chimeras to track the fate
of neural crest cells and found that many of them migrate to form a variety of
structures (942-944).
Carl
Ferdinand Cori (CZ -US) and Gerty Theresa Cori, née Radnitz (CZ -US) were the
first to discover that tumors in the living animal show an abnormally high
formation of lactic acid from glucose (306-308). Note: Otto Heinrich Warburg (DE) had
previously established that high aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis occurs in
tumors in an in vitro
environment.
John
Thomas Scopes (US) was the defendant in Tennessee
v. John Thomas Scopes, the so-called monkey
trial held in Dayton, Tennessee in July 1925, in which a science teacher
was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of the state laws at that
time. Two-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan led the
prosecution. Labor lawyer Clarence Darrow led the defense and goaded Bryan into
declaring that humans are not mammals (1576).
George
Hoyt Whipple (US), Frieda Saur Robscheit-Robbins (US), C. Arthur Elden (US),
Warren M. Sperry (US), and George B. Walden (US) found that liver, heart,
skeletal muscle, ash of liver, ash of kidney, and ash of pineapple promotes
regeneration of hemoglobin following severe anemia (1304-1307; 1735; 1736). These results suggested that iron in the
diet is important for hemoglobin formation.
Thomas
Benton Cooley (US) and Pearl Lee (US) reported on two Italian children with
symptoms of severe anemia, enlarged spleens and livers, discolored skin and
bone alterations (297). Thalassaemia or thalassemia
George
Hoyt Whipple (US) and William Leslie Bradford (US) coined the word thalassaemia deriving it from two Greek
words - Thalassa meaning the sea and haima meaning blood, literally "sea
water in the blood" (1734).
Gustav
Riehl (DE) described a therapy for deep burn wounds (1294).
Arnold
Rice Rich (US) concluded that hemoglobin, derived from destroyed erythrocytes,
is the sole source of bile pigment; its normal site of origin being in
reticuloendothelial cells alone, especially the Kupffer cells, and the epithelial liver cells having no role in the
formation, but only in the excretion of the bile pigment (1284).
Sanford
M. Rosenthal (CA) and Edwin C. White (CA) introduced the bromsulphalein test
for hepatic function with its attendant superiority over other tests for liver
function (1316).
Percival
Bailey (US) and Harvey Williams Cushing (US) postulated
that medulloblastomas (Bailey coined this name) are derived from embryonic undifferentiated
cells in the ependymal lining of the fourth ventricle. They described the
characteristic gross and microscopic structure of this tumor, its reddish-gray
color, extremely cellular nature, numerous mitotic figures, and the formation
of pseudo rosettes. The tendency of this tumor to spread to the leptomeninges,
which proved valuable in terms of treatment considerations, was noted. They
recommended radiotherapy in the post-operative care of patients with
medulloblastomas (70; 72).
Walter
Edward Dandy (US) reported a case in which he totally removed an acoustic
neuroma. He used a unilateral sub-occipital approach during which, following
gutting of the tumor, he gently drew the capsule away from the brainstem (355). Dandy's success was due in part to his
innovation called ventriculography, which involved x-rays and injecting a gas
into the brain's cerebral ventricles for visualizing the tumor. See, Dandy 1918.
Percy
Sargent (GB) was the first to remove a suprarenal tumor thus reversing virilism
in the patient. Gordon Morgan Holmes (GB) described the operation (735).
Henry
Sessions Souttar (GB) performed a "digital" mitral commissurotomy
(closed mitral valvulotomy) (1476).
Geoffrey
Jefferson (GB) performed
the first successful embolectomy in Britain (788).
Konstantine
Michaelovich Bykov (RU) and Alexei Dmitriev Speranski (RU) were the first to
demonstrate experimentally that the bilateral synergic activity of the
hemispheres of the brain may be dependent on the corpus callosum and indicated the part the corpus callosum plays in the development of symmetrical
reproduction of function in the hemispheres. He severed the corpus callosum in dogs and then used
Ivan Pavlov's classical conditioning methods to assess the effects of his
surgeries. His experiments showed the importance of the corpus callosum for interhemispheric communication (219; 220).
Howard
J. Curtis (US) and Archibald Philip Bard (US) used electrical stimulation to
prove the point-to-point connection of one side of the cortex to the other by
way of the corpus callosum (337).
Andreas
Vesalius (Flemish) gave the corpus
callosum its name (1620).
Howard
Christian Naffziger (US) described the phenomenon of the pineal shift on skull
x-rays, an important sign for brain tumor localization (1157).
John
Silas Lundy (US), in 1925, developed the
concept of balanced anesthesia. He introduced the idea of combining more than
one anesthetic technique—for example, using morphine preoperatively, a regional
block to the surgical site, alongside an inhalational anesthetic of ethylene (1010).
Hermann
Ludwig Blumgart (US) and Otto Christian Yens (US), in 1925, performed the most
famous of all radiotracer experiments on humans, the well-known study of
arm-to-arm circulation time (144). This ushered in the
field of nuclear medicine.
Marius
Nygaard Smith-Petersen (NO-US) introduced the three-flanged steel nail for
insertion across the fracture site in hip fractures, an innovation
that considerably improved recovery and mortality rates from hip fractures (1466).
Wolfgang
Köhler (DE) showed that instead of learning simply by trial and error chimpanzees can solve problems by grasping the
relations between means and ends, i.e., they displayed insight (864).
Merritt Lyndon Fernald (US) proved that in
the northeastern United States some species of plants and animals persisted in
areas that escaped glaciation during the Pleistocene (509).
Fritz Berckhemer (DE) found a fossil skull of
a young female in the Sigrist gravel pit north of Stuttgart, Germany and gave
it to Karl Sigrist (115; 116). This,
so called, Steinheim skull can be considered a Homo erectus/Homo sapiens
transitional form from the Middle Pleistocene, c. 1.3 M BP.
Raymond
Arthur Dart (AU-ZA) found in material from a limestone quarry at Taung (place
of the lion), South Africa a fossil cast of the inside of a primate skull,
which fitted into another lump of stone which possibly contained a face. It
took Dart about a month to remove enough stone to reveal the face and jaw of a
young fossil primate, which would be nicknamed the Taung baby. Dart considered
the fossil “an extinct race of apes intermediate between living anthropoids and
man.” He described it and named it Australopithecus
africanus (Southern ape from Africa) and dated it to between 3 and 2.3 M (364). Note: It was placed in the early
Pleistocene or late Pliocene. This finding revolutionized ideas about early
human evolution after human ancestors and apes split on the evolutionary tree.
Australopithecus africanus
existed between 3 and 2 million years ago. It is like A. afarensis, and was
also bipedal, but body size was slightly greater. Brain size may also have been
slightly larger, ranging between 420 and 500 cc. This is a little larger than
chimp brains (despite a similar body size), but still not advanced in the areas
necessary for speech. The back teeth were a little bigger than in A. afarensis.
Although the teeth and jaws of A. africanus are much larger than those of
humans, they are far more like human teeth than to those of apes. The shape of
the jaw is now fully parabolic, like that of humans, and the size of the canine
teeth is further reduced compared to A.
afarensis (281; 797).
The
American Type Culture Collection was founded. It is a repository and source of
known strains of viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, and eukaryotic cells.
Archivos de Neurobiologia, Psichologia,
Fisiologia, Histologia, Neurologia y Psiquiatria,
now titled Archivos de Neurobiologia
was founded.
1926
“Men
fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than death. Thought is
subversive, and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless
to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is
anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-tried
wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not
afraid.…Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the
chief glory of man.” Bertrand Russell (1328).
“Life
is bottled sunshine” William Winwood Reade (1273).
“The
striking similarity established by Meyerhof between the changes of
carbohydrates in muscle and in the yeast cell is seen to be much closer than
has been believed. The remarkable phenomena accompanying alcoholic fermentation
are now duplicated in the case of lactic acid production, and it may reasonably
be expected that most of the fermentative decompositions of sugars will be
found to be initiated in a similar manner.” Arthur Harden (679).
“The
characters of the individual are referable to paired elements (genes) in the
germinal matter that are held together in a definite number of linkage groups….
The members of each pair of genes separate when germ cells mature…. Each
germ-cell comes to contain only one set…. These principles…enable us to handle
problems of genetics in a strictly numerical basis and allow us to predict…what
will occur…. In these respects, the theory [of the gene] fulfills the
requirements of a scientific theory in the fullest sense.… It is difficult to
resist the fascinating assumption that the gene is constant because it
represents an organic chemical entity. This is the simplest assumption that one
can make at present, and since this view is consistent with all that is known
about the stability of the gene it seems, at least, a good working hypothesis.”
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1134).
Harland
W. Mossman (US) defined the placenta as "apposition or fusion of the fetal
membranes to the uterine mucosa for physiological exchange." (1144)
Theodor
Svedberg (SE) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on disperse
systems.
Johannes
Andreas Grib Fibiger (DK) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
for research indicating that a nematode, Spiroptera
carcinoma, caused gastric cancer in rats (513). The hypothesis was later rejected but,
nonetheless, had an important role in the development of experimental research
on cancer.
Gilbert
Newton Lewis (US) coined the term photon for the smallest unit of radiant
energy (968).
The
Commission on Units and Measurements defined the röntgen at the Second
International Congress of Radiology in Stockholm, Sweden. It was based on
ionization of air.
Walter
Norman Haworth (GB), William Charlton (GB), Stanley Peat (GB), John Vaughan
Loach (GB), John Herbert Geoffrey Plant (GB), and Charles William Long (GB)
had, by 1928, evolved and confirmed, among others, the structures of maltose,
cellobiose, lactose, gentiobiose, melibiose, gentianose, raffinose and the
glucoside ring structure of normal sugars (247; 700; 701).
Leopold
Stefan Ruzicka (HR-CH) analyzed civetone and muscone, two active compounds in
natural musk perfumes and found that they consist of very large rings of atoms.
He showed that civetone is composed of a 17-membered, and muscone a 15-membered
carbon ring. At this time, it was thought that rings with over 6 members were
too unstable to exist for long (1332). This paper was submitted in 1924.
Karl
Lohmann (DE) and Lorand Jendrassik (HU) developed a colorimetric determination
of phosphoric acid in muscle extracts (993).
Francis
Howard Carr (GB) and Ernest Arthur Price (GB) devised a test whereby color
observed in samples of oils is a direct measure of vitamin A activity (232).
Hans
Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin (DE-SE), Christian Barthel (LU), and Karl
David Reinhold Myrbäck (SE) found that dried yeast possesses practically the
same power of fermentation as fresh yeast although they retain only 1% of the
reproductive power (87; 1635).
Julio
Caesar Tello (PE) was inspired by the discovery in 1910 of the Paracas Textile (c. 100 BCE) at the site
of Cabeza Larga on the Paracas Peninsula on the South coast of Peru. In his
1925 excavations Tello found coca leaves placed in an urn, which accompanied
the burial of a Peruvian priest, noble, or king from the Nazca period. This is
the earliest record of the use of cocoa leaves (1547).
Albert
Jan Kluyver (NL) and Hendrick Jean Louis Donker (NL) wrote their treatise on
the unity of biochemistry in which
they stressed that biochemical mechanisms can be investigated using mutant
strains of microorganisms and that hydrogen transfer is a basic feature of all
metabolic processes (854).
Juda
Hirsch Quastel (GB-CA) and Barnet Woolf (GB) published the first reported measurement of
the equilibrium constant of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction. It was on the aspartate ammonia-lyase reaction (1261).
James
Batcheller Sumner (US) was the first to obtain an enzyme in pure crystalline
form. This was the enzyme urease,
which catalyzes the hydrolysis of urea to yield carbon dioxide and ammonia.
Sumner had used a 32% solution of acetone in water to precipitate much of the
organic material in a jack-bean extract rich in urease activity, while leaving most of the urease activity in solution. After filtering off this precipitate
and letting the filtrate stand overnight in the cold, he found that crystals of
protein had formed in the filtrate. Study of these protein crystals revealed
that they are pure urease enzyme
endowed with a specific enzymatic activity enormously greater than that of the
original jack-bean extract. It was thus proven that the enzyme urease is a protein and that a
polypeptide chain can act as a catalyst in the facilitation of a chemical
reaction.
Sumner’s
proof was an important milestone along the road to understanding the chemical
basis of cell function (1526).
John
Jacob Abel (US) crystallized insulin (3).
Anna
L. Sommer (US) and Charles B. Lipman (US) experimentally demonstrated the
essential nature of zinc, copper, and boron for plant growth (1472; 1473).
Alfred
Henry Sturtevant (US) found that inversion of a section of the third chromosome
in Drosophila melanogaster reduces
crossover frequency (1523).
Hugo
W. Alberts (US) devised a method for calculating genetic linkage values (15).
Calvin
Blackman Bridges (US) and Tomasz M. Olbrycht (PL) noted that to accurately
construct genetic maps it is necessary to know the full number of crossovers
(doubles counting as two crossovers, triples as three crossovers) that occur
between the loci that are to be mapped. In constructing such maps, it is first
necessary to determine experimentally the amounts by which the various crossing
over values exceed the directly observed recombination percents. The
experimental determination of the amount by which crossing over exceeds
recombination is made through use of loci lying between the two loci in
question. Bridges created the sc ec
ct v g f multiple recessive and called it "Xple"
(X-chromosome multiple). This organism was used to test many aspects of linkage
mapping (172).
Edgar
Altenburg (US) and Hermann J. Muller (US) demonstrated the nature of the
mechanism of inheritance of the truncate
character in Drosophila. They showed
that it conformed regularly to the principles of chromosome heredity, factor
constancy, etc., and disclosed the causes of the inconstancy of the inbred
stock, and of the indefiniteness and variability of the ratios thrown in
crosses. The
truncate character, when it was
analyzed, was found to depend on so many factors. 1) Two successive mutations were practically necessary, in the
first place, before truncate became visible at all. 2) Since truncate depended on a lethal, and was, in
addition, inconstant in somatic expression, it was subjected to selection,
which perpetuated any new factors (balancing lethals and intensifiers) that
still further differentiated truncate
from normal. 3) Since the truncate
character depended on an unstable developmental reaction, the initial
appearance of such intensifiers was made more likely (32).
Edgar
Douglas Adrian (GB) and Yngve Zotterman (SE), using the afferent nerve of a
stretch receptor in a frog muscle, showed that it is possible by amplification
to record the impulses in single nerve cells to a natural stimulus (tension).
They postulated the concept of adaptation
of receptors to stimuli and predicted that other units of the nervous system
would also exhibit adaptation (10).
Edgar
Douglas Adrian (GB) and Yngve Zotterman (SE), established
beyond doubt that the nerve impulse is invariant, that the intensity of
sensation is conveyed by the frequency of impulses and the quality by the type
of nerve fiber in action (10).
Eugene
Markley Landis (US), Schack August Steenberg Krogh (DK), and Abbey H. Turner
(US), in an elegant series of experiments, determined that the rate of net
fluid movement across the capillary wall is proportional to the difference
between capillary hydrostatic pressure and the osmotic pressure of the plasma
proteins, thus providing the first experimental proof of Ernest Starling’s
hypothesis of fluid exchange. Landis’s constant of proportionality was the
first quantitative measurement of the hydrodynamic conductance of the capillary
wall (cubic microns of fluid per second per centimeter water pressure
difference per square micrometer of capillary wall). These papers included the
first measurements of the pressure drops along the vascular tree and
localization of the separate components of the peripheral resistance to blood
flow, in mammals as well as frogs (897; 916-928). See,
Starling 1896.
John
Belling (GB-US) perfected the aceto-carmine staining method by adding iron.
This technique was especially important because it allowed a clear
differentiation between chromosomes and cytoplasm (109).
Walter
Bradford Cannon (US) coined the word homeostasis:
the maintenance of balance in the body’s state via chemical feedback mechanisms
(224; 225). See, Claude Bernard
(FR) for his concept called milieu intérieur, 1865. See, Alcmaèon (GR) for his concept called
isonomy, 520 BCE
Gaston
Ramon (FR) and Pierre A. Descombey (FR) described the flocculation reaction and
observed that flocculation may occur in zones that do not correspond to the
point at which the toxin and antitoxin neutralize each other (1267).
Kenjiró
Fujii (JP) observed the coiled structure of the chromosome for the first time
noting that in certain stages of the cell cycle, two filaments appeared to be
coiled around one another (572).
Frantisek
Vejdovsky (CZ) showed that nuclear fission in an ovule is preceded by the
splitting of the centrosome (which he called the periplast); he was apparently the first to observe the centriole in
1866 (1616).
Félix
Hubert d’Herelle (CA) described the three-step process for the life history of
the bacteriophage virus: (1) attachment to the susceptible bacterium, (2)
multiplication in the cell, and (3) disintegration of the cell to set free the
progeny virus particles and attachment of the progeny to other susceptible
bacteria, if such are present. These conclusions were based on the
plaque-count, and dilution methods of assay that he had invented (342).
Louis
Otto Kunkel (US) demonstrated that Cicadula
sexnotata (a leafhopper) could act as a vector of aster yellows virus (909).
Thomas
Clifford Vanterpool (CA) was the first to discover that mixed infections, the simultaneous occurrence of two viruses within
a host plant acting together, could produce a distinct severe disease. He
showed that tomato mosaic virus and potato mosaic virus acting together caused
the severe disease of tomatoes called streak
or winter blight while either virus
acting alone was shown to cause mild symptoms (1614).
Andre
Paillot (FR) discovered granulosis virus (GV) infection in an insect, Pieris brassicae (cabbage butterfly). He
was the first to describe a new group of diseases, the granuloses, which are
characterized by the formation of virus inclusion bodies called granules within tissues of infected
insects (1198). These are now considered Baculovirus.
Frederik
Kraneveld (NL) and Thomas M. Doyle (GB) discovered Newcastle disease virus (425; 876). Note:
first paramyxovirus
William
Edwin Cotton (US), Peter K. Olitsky (US), Jacob Traum (US), and Harry W.
Schoening (US) discovered vesicular stomatitis viruses (320; 1192).
Patrick
Playfair Laidlaw (GB) and George William Dunkin (GB) established the viral
etiology of canine distemper (915).
Edson
Sunderland Bastin (US) succeeded in culturing sulfate-reducing bacteria from
groundwater samples extracted from an oil deposit that was hundreds of meters
below the surface. Since this discovery over 9,000 strains of bacteria and
fungi have been isolated from diverse subsurface environments (88; 548).
Heinrich
Bernward Prell (DE) reported an amoebic infection of an insect, Apis mellifera Linn. (honeybee). The
etiological agent he described and named Malpighamoeba
mellificae attacks the Malpighian tubules causing a dysentery (1251; 1252).
Walter
H. Burkholder (US) observed that halo blight of beans is caused by Pseudomonas phaseolicola (194).
Everitt
George Dunne Murray (CA), Robert Alexander Webb (GB), and Meredith Blake Robson
Swann (GB) isolated and characterized Listeria
monocytogenes as the etiological agent of an epizootic among laboratory
rabbits and guinea pigs, which was characterized in part by monocytosis (1154).
Walter
F. Schlech III (US), Pierre M. Lavigne (US), Robert A. Bortolussi (US),
Alexander C. Allen (US), E. Vanora Haldane (US), A. John Wort (US), Allen W.
Hightower (US), Scott E. Johnson (US), Stanley H. King (US), Eric S. Nicholls
(US), and Clare V. Broome (US) established that human consumption of Listeria-contaminated foodstuffs causes
a disease called listeriosis (1364).
Louis
Edmond den Dooren de Jong (NL) demonstrated that a strain of Pseudomonas putida can proliferate on a
mineral medium to which any one of some eighty compounds was added as the sole
organic substance available (374).
Maurice
Lemoigne (FR) originally discovered poly-beta-hydroxybutyric acid (PHB) as a
major component of the cells of the bacterium Bacillus megaterium (957).
Frederick
P. Delafield (US), Michael Doudoroff (US), Norberto J. Palleroni (US), Carol
Jean Lusty (US) and Rebecca Contopoulos (US) later honored Lemoigne by naming Pseudomonas lemoigne, an active oxidizer
of extracellular PHB, for him (382).
Frank
W. Tilley (US) and Jacob M. Schaffer (US) determined that the germicidal
activity of the aliphatic alcohols increases regularly from methyl through
octyl alcohol for each additional methyl group in the straight chain (1361; 1563).
Samuel
Ottmar Mast (US) proposed the tail
contraction model to explain sol-gel amoeboid movement (1056).
John
Nathaniel Couch (US) described for the first time the existence of
physiologically distinct and separate male and female strains in an oomycete (Dictyuchus) (321).
Friedrich
Seidel (DE), using eggs of the dragonfly, Platycnemis
pennipes, determined that embryonic
development in insects is typified by the presence of a special kind of
germ-band formation. Because of the distribution of cytoplasm and yolk in the
egg the germ band is limited to a particular region. The ventral portion of the
developing embryo is special because it is the carrier of the main system of
organs. The ventral part of the embryo precedes the dorsal side in development (1386-1388).
Alden
B. Dawson (US) carried out the first successful skeletal
staining when he used alizarin red S (370).
Henry
Allan Gleason (US) argued that every plant association is the unique product of
the fluctuating environmental conditions of a particular time and place (610).
Gavin
Rylands de Beer (GB) observed that certain cartilage and bone cells are derived
from the outer ectodermal layer of the embryo; calling into question the
germ-layer theory (372).
Lloyd
R. Watson (US) devised instrumental methods to artificially inseminate the
honeybee (221; 1710; 1711). This instrument greatly improved genetics
of the honeybee.
Sergei
Sergeevich Chetverikov (RU) concluded that populations in nature maintain
within themselves the variants, which arise within them by mutation. This would
provide them with a supply of potential but hidden variability out of which the
adaptiveness of the population to a changing environment could arise (251; 252). Note: Together with Ronald Aylmer
Fisher, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, and Sewall Green Wright, Chetverikov is
now regarded as one of the founders of population genetics and modern
evolutionary theory.
William
Bloom (US) worked out the early stages of the embryogenesis of human bile
capillaries (142).
William
Bloom (US) described the transformation of small lymphocytes into myelocytes in
germinal centers (143).
George
Ellett Coghill (US), in his studies of the amphibian Amblystoma punctatum, established that innervation develops in a
cephalo-caudal (head-tail) direction, and that limb movements emerge from a
more general pattern of trunk movement. He then theorized that behavior
develops as the expansion of a "total pattern," rather than simply as
the combination or coordination of reflexes and suggested strongly that this
might well be true for higher vertebrates, including man (282-285).
Serguei
Metalnikov (RU-FR) and Victor Chorine (FR) provided an important paper in
psychoneuroimmunology when they adapted Pavlov’s procedures of stimulant
conditioning to activate and enhance cellular and antibody immune responses to
foreign substances, particularly to otherwise lethal doses of cholera and
anthrax bacteria (1093).
Ralph
Milton Waters (US) authored a landmark article on carbon dioxide (CO2)
absorption in anesthesiology (1707).
Karl
Ernest Mason (US), working with the rat, was the first to associate testicular
degeneration and hence male infertility with vitamin E deficiency (1054).
Harold
S. Olcott (US) and Henry A. Mattill (US) fractionated the oil of lettuce and
found that one fraction had high antioxidant power and high potency as a source
of vitamin E (1190).
Herbert
McLean Evans (US), Oliver H. Emerson (US), and Gladys A. Emerson (US) isolated
alpha-tocopherol from wheat germ oil and discovered that it is synonymous with
vitamin E (482).
Erhard
Robert Fernholz (US) determined the structure of alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) (510).
Paul
Karrer (RU-CH), Hans Heinrich Fritzsche (CH), Beat Heinrich Ringier (CH), and
H. Salomon (CH) synthesized alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) and proved its
biological role as a vitamin (819).
Wells
Phillips Eagleton (US) described cavernous
sinus thrombophlebitis in relation to septicemia
(433).
Giovanni
Di Guglielmo (IT) described a syndrome of unknown origin characterized by
enormous numbers of nucleated erythrocytes appearing in the bone marrow and
blood (acute erythroblastosis) (394).
Erik
Adolf Willebrand (FI) described a previously unknown form of hemophilia with a prolonged bleeding
time course as its most prominent sign. He named it pseudo-hemophilia (1652; 1753; 1754). Note:
Later called Willebrand’s disease I
Nikolai
Mikhailovich Itsenko (RU) described glucocorticoid
excess syndrome in which the hypersecretion of glucocorticoids is secondary
to hypersecretion of adrenocorticotrophic hormone from the pituitary. It may
also be caused by a basophilic adenoma of the pituitary (777).
Harvey
Williams Cushing (US) described this syndrome six years later (339). It is often called Cushing’s syndrome I but should be called Itsenko-Cushing syndrome.
Felix
Mandl (AT) was the first to undertake parathyroid surgery, successfully
removing a parathyroid adenoma in a patient with osteitis fibrosa cystica (1027).
Henry
Head (GB) presented his theory of aphasia
as a condition with, “a disorder of symbolic formulation and expression” (704).
César
Roux (CH) performed the first surgical resection of a pheochromocytoma, in 1926 (1028). Later the same year, Charles Horace Mayo
(US) performed the first surgical resection in the United States and described
medical and surgical management of pheochromocytoma (1063).
Percival
Bailey (US) and Harvey Williams Cushing (US) wrote a book, which formed the basis of modern day neurooncology.
It completely revolutionized the understanding of neurooncology, and for first
time the neurosurgical community was presented with an orderly classification
of gliomas based on the tumor's natural history and clinical course. This work
changed antiquated thinking by showing that the microscopic structure of a
tumor is important for prognosis. It completely revamped the understanding of
these tumors. In fact, the histopathological basis of brain tumors in relation
to patient survival rate and outcome still influences present-day neurosurgical
thought (73).
Percival Bailey (US) simplified, refined, and
made the concepts presented in the 1926 book more practical (68; 69).
Harvey
Williams Cushing (US) and William T. Bovie (US) conceived and introduced
electrosurgery, which allowed the cutting of tissue with almost no bleeding.
During 1927, Cushing removed a number of brain tumors previously considered
inoperable (341; 1293).
Maximilian Carl-Friedrich Nitze (DE), in
1896, developed an operating cystoscope fitted with an electric cautery (1176).
Francis
Bertody Sumner (US) made a thorough study of coat color among the mainland and
Santa Rosa Island mice and concluded that both isolation and natural selection
probably operated in the origin of species, but that environmental mechanisms
could not be ruled out. Though still not conclusive, Sumner’s reading of
nature’s experiments on Santa Rosa came closer than any other study at the time
— field or lab — to providing empirical evidence of the mechanism of evolution.
Santa Rosa is an island off the Florida panhandle (1526).
Knud
Haraldsen Krabbe (DK) founded the journal Acta
Psychiatrica et Neurologica Scandinavica.
1927
Heinrich
Otto Wieland (DE) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his
investigations of the constitution of the bile acids and related substances.
Julius
Wagner-Jauregg (AT) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for
his discovery of fever therapy for paresis
(dementia paralytica). He shared the
honor with the pathologist Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger (DK), who was awarded
the prize "for his discovery of the Spiroptery carcinoma."
Georges
Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaitre (BE) proposed the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. He visualized a primal atom, an incredibly dense egg containing all the material for the
universe within a sphere about 30 times larger than the Sun. This primal atom exploded some 20-60 Ga
scattering matter and energy in all direction (955; 956). This theory is now
known popularly as the Big Bang Theory,
a phrase coined by Fred Hoyle (GB) in a moment of facetiousness, during a radio
broadcast (762). Note:
Alexander Friedmann (RU) proposed an expanding universe as early as 1922 (108). Note: Today,
most physicists and cosmologists conceive of the primal atom as having
been smaller than Lemaitre's!
Alexander
Logie du Toit (ZA) compared the geology of South America and South Africa and
found them to be similar in many ways (428).
Hans
Busch (DE) theorized that magnetic fields could act as lenses by focusing
electron beams to a point (211). This was vital to the invention of the
electron microscope.
Hermann
Joseph Muller, Jr. (US) and Lewis John Stadler (US) discovered that x-rays
induce mutations in animals and plants respectively. They found that the
dose-frequency curve is linear (1150; 1483; 1484). Note: here there is emplied that somatic
mutations initiate cancer
Albert
Charles Chibnall (GB) and Harold John Channon (GB) discovered the exact
structure of phosphatidic acid; described for the first time in living
materials (255).
Otto
Knut Olof Folin (SE-US) and Vintila Ciocalteu (RO) designed
the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent to detect phenolic and antioxidant
polyphenols (536). Note: This
work used the now famous Folin-Ciocalteu reagent.
Rudolph
John Anderson (SE-US) isolated the various lipoid and carbohydrate fractions
from the tubercle bacillus. He was able to separate the lipoid constituents of
tubercle bacilli into three groups consisting of wax, glycerides, and
phosphatides (39).
Rudolph John Anderson (SE-US) described the constitution of phthiocol, a
fat-soluble pigment he isolated from human tubercle bacillus. He determined
that this previously unknown substance was in fact 2-methyl-3-hydroxy-1,
4-naphthaquinone (41).
Otto
Fritz Meyerhof (DE-US) discovered that the first step in the fermentation of
glucose (glucose → glucose-6-phosphate), catalyzed by an enzyme he called
hexokinase, does not require
inorganic phosphate but rather organic phosphate transferred from its terminal,
or g position on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) (1098).
Otto
Fritz Meyerhof (DE-US) and Fritz Albert Lipmann (DE-US) discovered that sodium
fluoride strongly inhibits the fermentation and phosphorylation of hexoses (985; 1098).
Hans
Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin (DE-SE), Erich Adler (), Otto Fritz
Meyerhof (DE-US), Sidney P. Colowick (US), and Herman Moritz Kalckar (DK-US)
partially purified hexokinase then
established the reaction which it catalyzes as: glucose + adenosine
triphosphate (ATP) à glucose 6-phosphate + adenosine diphosphate
(ADP) (293; 1101; 1634)
Hans
Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin (DE-SE) ws the first to show that the combination
between an enzyme and a substrate can be traced back to a certain atomic group.
He was experimenting with dipeptidases in which a carbonyl group is the site of
combination (1632; 1633).
Otto
Paul Hermann Diels (DE), Willy Gädke (DE), and Anna Karstens (DE) used selenium
to dehydrogenate cholesterol thus yielding Diels’
hydrocarbon, an aromatic hydrocarbon closely related to the skeletal
structure of all steroids, of which cholesterol is one (399; 400).
Otto
Paul Hermann Diels (DE) and Hermann Klare (DE), in 1934, put forth the correct
structure of Diels’ hydrocarbon as
3'-methyl-1, 2-cyclopentaphenanthrene. This work represents a dramatic turning
point in the understanding of the chemistry of cholesterol and other steroids.
Juda
Hirsch Quastel (GB-CA) and Walter Reginald Wooldridge (GB) studied
dehydrogenases from Escherichia coli
and further developed the concept of the active
center, or site of activation, a
term earlier coined by Quastel (1926). This work stressed the importance of
using in vitro results to understand in vivo activities of enzymes (1259). They also discovered that malonic acid is a
powerful inhibitor of succinic
dehydrogenase (1260).
Philip
Eggleton (GB) and Marion Grace Palmer Eggleton (GB) found an organic
acid-labile phosphate in muscle tissue. They named it phosphagen (phosphocreatine) and established the fact that muscular
contraction is accompanied by removal of phosphagen,
and subsequent recovery in oxygen is characterized by a rapid restitution of
the phosphagen—a phase of recovery
apparently independent of the relatively slow oxidative removal of lactic acid (450).
Cyrus
Hartwell Fiske (US) and Yellapragada SubbaRow (IN-US) discovered the chemical
nature of the phosphagen
(phosphocreatine) present in muscles.
They announced that voluntary muscle contains an unstable compound of creatine
and phosphoric acid, which is hydrolyzed by stimulation, and resynthesized when
the muscle is permitted to recover. They proposed a structure and pointed out
some of the physiological properties of phosphocreatine (later changed to
creatine phosphate) (529; 530; 532). Note:
Michel-Eugène Chevreul (FR), in 1832, determined that muscle contains creatine (254).
Bernhard
Zondek (DE-IL) and Selmar Aschheim (DE) isolated estrogenic hormone from the
urine of pregnant women in amounts averaging 12,000 mouse units per liter