Evelyn M. Anderson

Evelyn M. Anderson (1899–1985) was an American physiologist and biochemist, known for her co-discovery of ACTH (adreno-cortical thyroid hormone) in 1934.

Early Life and Education

Evelyn Anderson was born March 20, 1899 in Willmar, Minnesota to Swedish immigrants. She attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota where she obtained her Bachelors. In 1928 she gained her M.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Medicine. During her time at Berkeley her research culminated into two papers about vitamin A and nutrition. She continued onto receive her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Montreal in 1934. She married Webb E. Haymaker in 1936.[1]

Career

While working on her dissertation Anderson co-discovered ACTH with J. B. Collip and D. L. Thomson and, in a paper published in 1933 explained its function in the body. In 1935 she published another paper with Collip on the discovery of an anti-thyroid hormone which greatly contributed to the general knowledge and understanding of anti-hormones. Then she returned to the University of California at Berkeley to instruct and became an associate professor of medicine in 1946, while continuing her research on hormone related diseases. Most notably she discovered with Webb E. Haymaker that Cushing's disease is caused by hyper function of the adrenal cortex. Anderson also worked with zoologist Joseph A. Long to develop an apparatus to study the secretions of insulin from the pancreas in a rat model. This model and technique were later used with an immunochemical assay for human insulin. In 1946 Anderson received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work in Phillip Bard's laboratory at Johns Hopkins. She then moved to the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (NIAMD) at the National Institute of Health where she became the chief of Secretion on Endocrinology. Anderson became a Visiting Professor of Physiology at Howard University in 1955, where her research focused on hypothalmic regulation of metabolism. In 1962 she returned to California where she became NASA's head of neuroendocrinology at the Ames Research Institute. From this position she retired in 1969. She had three children and eight grandchildren.[1]

Award and Legacy

References

  1. 1 2 Ogilvie, Marilyn (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY, 10001: Routledge. pp. 35–36.
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