For this week’s Scientist of the
Week segment, I have chosen: Maud Leonora Menten of the Michaelis-Menten equation famous for her
core work in biochemistry, taught in college, used daily in biochemistry
research and applications. She was amazing and relentlessly pursued her work despite
many obstacles.
Biography:
Maud Menten was born March 20, 1879 in Port
Lambton, Ontario, Canada and studied medicine at the University of Toronto
(B.A. 1904, M.B. Physiology 1907, M.D. 1911). She was among the first women in
Canada to earn a medical doctorate. She completed her thesis work at University
of Chicago.
Miss
Menten was woman who wore “Paris hats, blue dresses with stained-glass hues,
and Buster Brown shoes.” She drove a Model T Ford through the University of
Pittsburgh area for some 32 years and enjoyed many adventurous and artistic
hobbies.
She was an extremely motivated and a hard-worker;
she continued to work all her life until she was too sick to no longer work. Menten was so dedicated to her work so she
learnt to communicate in German and was able to communicate in a total of 6 languages
throughout her life including Russian, French, German, Italian, and at least one
Native-American language.
Key Research / Awards:
Miss Menten headed for Germany by
ship, in the same year that the Titanic had sank, despite being advised not to.
She was determined to work with Leonor Michaelis- the well-known, German, biochemist.
They worked together to solve the
mystery of enzyme kinetics, studying the rates and mechanisms of enzymatic
reactions. Together they devised the Michaelis-Menten Equation, the famous
equation that is vital till today which calculates the rate of an enzyme
reaction and is taught to all biochemistry undergraduates today.
After travelling from Germany to
the USA, Miss Menten continued her PhD in 1916 worked at the University of
Pittsburgh (She was awarded a professorship in 1950). She then went to become a
pathologist at the Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital in 1926 where she studied
histochemistry and paediatric pathology.
She’s credited for having conducted the first
separation of proteins by electrophoresis, and she developed a staining method
using azo dyes that’s still used in histochemistry today. In 1950 Menten retired
and returned to Canada where she continued to work here she
continued to do cancer research at the British Columbia Medical Research
Institute till 1955.
Over her entire career she wrote
and co-wrote about 100 research papers, many of which are historic
contributions.
Nobel Peace Prize:
She may not have won one but she
definitely deserved one!
“I’ve stirred them up, so now I
can go.” - Maud Leonora Menten
Comments
Post a Comment