Northrop, John Howard

Northrop, John Howard

(born July 5, 1891, Yonkers, N.Y., U.S.—died May 27, 1987, Wickenberg, Ariz.) U.S. biochemist. He worked most of his career on the staff of New York City's Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (1916–61). His early research on fermentation processes led to a study of enzymes essential for digestion, respiration, and general life processes. He established that enzymes obey the laws of chemical reactions, and he crystallized pepsin, trypsin, and chymotrypsin and their zymogens. With James Sumner and Wendell Meredith Stanley he shared a 1946 Nobel Prize.