Joseph S. Fruton

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Joseph S. Fruton
Born May 14, 1912(1912-05-14)
Czestochowa, Poland;
Died July 29, 2007 (aged 95)
New Haven United States
Nationality Polish, American,
Institutions Rockefeller Institute Yale University
Alma mater Columbia University 1934

Joseph Stewart Fruton (May 14, 1912 - July 29, 2007), born Joseph Fruchtgarten, was a Jewish Polish-American biochemist and historian of science. His most significant scientific work involved synthetic peptides and their interactions with proteases; with his wife Sophia Simmonds he also published an influential textbook, General Biochemistry (1953; 1958).[1] From 1970 until his death, Fruton worked extensively on the history of science, particularly the history of biochemistry and molecular biology.

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[edit] Childhood and education

Joseph Fruchtgarten was born in Czestochowa, Poland; his father Shama Nuta (Charles) Fruchtgarten was a grain merchant, and his mother Ella (Aisenstadt) Fruchtgarten was a French teacher. Like many other Polish Jews, the Fruchtgartens immigrated to the United States shortly before the outbreak of World War I. They lived in New York City from 1913 to 1917, and in April 1917 they moved to Minsk (then occupied by the Red Army in the midst of the Russian Civil War).[2] Between 1917 and 1923, Fruchtgarten attended school intermittently, moving from Minsk to Siedlce to Warsaw to Berlin, and learning French, German and Latin (in addition to Polish and English). In 1923, the Fruchtgartens returned to New York and changed their name to Fruton to avoid being targets of anti-Semitism. Joseph Fruton followed his father in rejecting religion, but learned early on "not to advertise either [his] Jewishness or [his] atheism."[3]

After a few months at De Witt Clinton High School, Fruton joined the first class of students at James Madison High School. He graduated summa cum laude in 1927, excelling particularly in chemistry. He applied to Columbia University, and after an initial rejection—possibly because he was only 15 at the time, possibly because the school had already admitted the quota of New York Jews&dmash;his mother convinced an admissions official to reverse the decision. Inspired by the character Max Gottlieb from the Sinclair Lewis novel Arrowsmith, Fruton planned his Columbia education around becoming a scientist. The lectures and lab-work of organic chemist John M. Nelson turned Fruton on to biochemistry. He received his degree in chemistry in 1931, and entered graduate school in the Department of Biological Chemistry in the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, working under Hans Thacher Clarke.[4] Fruton's PhD work focused on "the lability of cystine in alkali", although he developed a broad interest in the range of biochemistry-related research being pursued at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.[5]

During graduate school Fruton also became active politically, opposing fascism, militarism and anti-Semitism. In 1933 he met Sophia "Topsy" Simmonds, whom he married in 1936. Upon completing his PhD in May 1934, Fruton became a research assistant to Max Bergmann at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.[6]

[edit] Research at the Rockefeller Institute

Fruton was a researcher at the Rockefeller Institute from 1934 to 1945, part of Max Bergmann's longterm and very successful research program in protein chemistry. In his earliest work there, Fruton tested the stereochemical specificity of dipeptidase. Under the tutelage of fellow Bergmann lab researcher Leonidas Zervas, a pioneer in peptide synthesis, Fruton synthesized stereospecific dipeptides and other small peptides as enzyme substrates. Fruton and his colleagues found significant instances of specificity in a range of proteases—observations that were relevant to the ongoing theoretical discussions of protein structure. His most significant discovery at the Rockefeller Institute was a synthetic peptide substrate for pepsin, contrary to the common idea that pepsin would not act on short synthetic peptides. As a side project, he also worked on applications of Bergmann and Zervas's carbobenzoxy method of peptide synthesis and the some of the associated side reactions. [7]

Between December 1941 and the end of World War II, research in Bergmann's lab shifted from basic protein chemistry to war-related research under the National Defense Research Committee, part of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Fruton studied the chemistry of nitrogen mustards. In 1943, Fruton won the American Chemical Society's Eli Lilly Award.[8]

[edit] Biochemistry at Yale

In 1945, after Max Bergmann's death, Fruton joined the Yale University Department of Physiological Chemistry (part of the medical school) —headed then by C. N. Hugh Long—where he taught biological chemistry to medical students. Fruton joined a growing science faculty, which included the editor of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Rudolph Anderson; biochemist Edward Tatum also came to Yale at the same time. At the end of his five-year appointment as assistant professor, Fruton was promoted to full professor received a joint appointment in the Chemistry department—at the time, the only Jewish full professor in the medical school.[9] By 1952, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and that year he also became chairman of the Department of Physiological Chemistry (which was renamed Biochemistry, reflecting the shift in research focus from medical to general biological problems).[10]

Most of Fruton's early research at Yale was funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation; Warren Weaver was making enzymology one of the Foundation's research focuses. Fruton headed a growing lab that included doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and technical assistants. The two main areas of research were the action of proteolytic enzymes and the chemical (as opposed to biological) synthesis of peptides (the substrates used to explore the enzymatic reactions). Members of Fruton's lab studied cathepsin C and several other peptidases, as well as proteinases that catalyzed transpeptidation, which was thought (and ultimately confirmed) to be part of the biosynthesis of proteins.[11]

In addition to research at Yale, in 1948 Fruton visited the laboratories of several eminent biochemists: Kaj Linderstrøm-Lang's chemistry department at the Carlsberg Laboratory; Hugo Theorell's lab in Stockholm; and Alexander Todd's lab at Cambridge University.[12]

[edit] Death

Fruton died two days after his wife in New Haven on 29 July 2007.[13]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Joseph S. Fruton (1912–, Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, 2006. Accessed April 17, 2008
  2. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 8-12
  3. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 12-15; quotation from p. 15
  4. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 16-23
  5. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 23-32; quotation from p. 27
  6. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 26, 32, 38
  7. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 38-54
  8. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 55-58
  9. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 75-87
  10. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 114-122
  11. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 89-92
  12. ^ Fruton, Eighty Years, pp. 92-112
  13. ^ In Memoriam: Biochemists Joseph Fruton and Sofia Simmonds

[edit] References

  • Fruton, Joseph S. Eighty Years. New Haven, Connecticut: Epikouros Press, 1994. ISBN 0-640467-0-9

[edit] External links