Christian B. Anfinsen

Christian Boehmer Anfinsen Jr. (March 26, 1916 – May 14, 1995)[1] 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).[2]

Christian B. Anfinsen
Christian B. Anfinsen in 1969
Born
Christian Boehmer Anfinsen Jr.

March 26, 1916
Monessen, Pennsylvania
DiedMay 14, 1995(1995-05-14) (aged 79)
Randallstown, Maryland
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSwarthmore College (BA, 1937)
University of Pennsylvania (MS, 1939)
Harvard Medical School (PhD, 1943)
Known forRibonuclease, Anfinsen's dogma
Spouse(s)Florence Kenenger (1941-1978; divorced; 3 children)
Libby Shulman Ely (m. 1979; 4 stepchildren)
AwardsNobel Prize in Chemistry (1972)
Scientific career
FieldsBiochemistry

Background

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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]

Anfinsen had three children with his first wife, Florence Kenenger, to whom he was married from 1941 to 1978. He married Libby Shulman Ely, with whom he had 4 stepchildren, in 1979.[6]

His papers were donated to the National Library of Medicine by Libby Anfinsen between 1998 and 1999.[7]

Career
Anfinsen in the lab

In 1950, the National Heart Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, recruited Anfinsen as chief of its laboratory of cell physiology. In 1954, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship enabled Anfinsen to return to the Carlsberg Laboratory for a year and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship allowed him to study at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel from 1958 to 1959.[8] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958.[9]

In 1962, Anfinsen returned to Harvard Medical School as a visiting professor and was invited to become chair of the department of chemistry. He was subsequently appointed chief of the laboratory of chemical biology at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (now the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), where he remained until 1981. In 1981, Anfinsen became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.[10] From 1982 until his death in 1995, Anfinsen was professor of biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins.[11]

Ribonuclease A 3D structure, with SS bonds in gold

Anfinsen published more than 200 original articles, mostly in the area of the relationships between structure and function in proteins. He was also a pioneer of ideas in the area of nucleic acid compaction. In 1961, he showed that ribonuclease could be refolded after denaturation while preserving enzyme activity, thereby suggesting that all the information required by protein to adopt its final conformation is encoded in its amino-acid sequence. He belonged to the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the American Philosophical Society.[5][12]

Christian B. Anfinsen Award

Established in 1996, The Christian B. Anfinsen Award is presented annually to distinguished scientists, the Awards recognize excellence and outstanding achievements in the multidisciplinary fields of protein science, and honor distinguished contributions in the areas of leadership, education, or service. It is sponsored by The Protein Society, and recognizes significant technical achievements in the field of protein science.[13]

Past recipients of the Christian B. Anfinsen Award include:

Selected works
gollark: Oh, and they changed the iconography again.
gollark: It seems to still be 14nm. Great job, Intel!
gollark: Maybe they worked out how to turn of access to it.
gollark: I am very much not knowledgeable about MacOS and however Macs boot.
gollark: Just avoid doing any bad things!

See also

References
  1. "Anfinsen, Christian Boehmer". Who Was Who in America, 1993-1996, vol. 11. New Providence, N.J.: Marquis Who's Who. 1996. p. 7. ISBN 0837902258.
  2. ''The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1972'' (The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 2012-03-08.
  3. "The Christian B. Anfinsen Papers: Biographical Information". profiles.nlm.nih.gov.
  4. ''Biography of Christian B. Anfinsen'' (U.S. National Library of Medicine). Profiles.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved on 2012-03-08.
  5. "The Christian B. Anfinsen Papers". National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 2009-08-23.
  6. "OBITUARY: Christian Anfinsen". The Independent. May 24, 1995.
  7. "Christian Anfinsen Papers 1939-1999 (bulk 1964-1999)". National Library of Medicine.
  8. ''Christian B. Anfinsen – 1957'' (Guggenheim Foundation) Archived June 22, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Gf.org. Retrieved on 2012-03-08.
  9. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 18 April 2011.
  10. "About Us". World Cultural Council. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  11. ''Obituary:Christian Anfinsen''. independent.co.uk (1995-05-24). Retrieved on 2012-03-08.
  12. ''Christian B. Anfinsen'' (Store norske leksikon). Snl.no. Retrieved on 2012-03-08.
  13. "THE CHRISTIAN B. ANFINSEN AWARD". Archived from the original on March 19, 2016.
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