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.

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Northrop, John Howard 

Born July 5, 1891, in Yon-kers, N. Y. American biochemist.

In 1912, Northrop graduated from Columbia University, where he received the Ph.D. degree in 1915. From 1915 to 1962 he worked at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. His main works deal with the biochemistry of enzymes. Together with his co-workers, he was the first to isolate proteolytic enzymes in crystalline form, including pepsin (1930) and trypsin (1932). He was also the first to isolate a bacteria virus and diphtheria antitoxin. Following up the work of J. B. Sumner, he showed that enzymes are proteins. Northrop won a Nobel Prize in 1946, together with W. M. Stanley and J. B. Sumner.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Kristallicheskie fermenty. Moscow, 1950. (Coauthored by M. Kunitz and R. Herriott.)