Christian Boehmer Anfinsen Jr. (March 26, 1916 – May 14, 1995) was an American

biochemist Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and Cell (biology), cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of ...

. He shared the 1972

Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...

with Stanford Moore and

William Howard Stein William Howard Stein (June 25, 1911 – February 2, 1980) was an American biochemist who collaborated in the determination of the ribonuclease sequence, as well as how its structure relates to catalytic activity, earning a Nobel Prize in Ch ...

for work on

ribonuclease Ribonuclease (commonly abbreviated RNase) is a type of nuclease that catalyzes the degradation of RNA into smaller components. Ribonucleases can be divided into endoribonucleases and exoribonucleases, and comprise several sub-classes within the ...

, especially concerning the connection between the

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha am ...

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is calle ...

and the biologically active conformation (see

Anfinsen's dogma Anfinsen's dogma, also known as the thermodynamic hypothesis, is a postulate in molecular biology. It states that, at least for a small globular protein in its standard physiological environment, the native structure is determined only by the pro ...

). *
"Anfinsen, Christian B. ."
Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. . ''Encyclopedia.com''.

Background

Anfinsen was born in

Monessen, Pennsylvania Monessen is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 6,876 at the 2020 census. In 1940, 20,257 people lived there. In 1990 the population was 13,026. Monessen is the southwestern-most municipality of Westmore ...

, into a family of

Norwegian-American Norwegian Americans ( nb, Norskamerikanere, nn, Norskamerikanarar) are Americans with ancestral roots in Norway. Norwegian immigrants went to the United States primarily in the latter half of the 19th century and the first few decades of the ...

immigrants. His parents were Sophie (née Rasmussen) and Christian Boehmer Anfinsen Sr., a mechanical engineer. The family moved to Philadelphia in the 1920s. In 1933, he went to

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

where he played varsity football and earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1937. In 1939, he earned a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in organic chemistry from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

and was awarded an

American-Scandinavian Foundation The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) is an American non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting international understanding through educational and cultural exchange between the United States and Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Swede ...

fellowship to develop new methods for analyzing the chemical structure of complex proteins, namely

enzymes Enzymes () are proteins that act as biological catalysts by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different molecule ...

, at the

Carlsberg Laboratory The Carlsberg Research Laboratory is a private scientific research center in Copenhagen, Denmark under the Carlsberg Group. It was founded in 1875 by J. C. Jacobsen, the founder of the Carlsberg brewery, with the purpose of advancing biochemica ...

Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. In 1941, Anfinsen was offered a university fellowship for doctoral study in the Department of Biological Chemistry at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

where he received his PhD in biochemistry in 1943. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he worked for the

Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1 ...

. Anfinsen had three children with his first wife, Florence Kenenger, to whom he was married from 1941 to 1978. In 1979, he married Libby Shulman Ely, with whom he had 4 stepchildren, * * and converted to Orthodox Judaism. However, Anfinsen wrote in 1987 that "my feelings about religion still very strongly reflect a fifty-year period of orthodox agnosticism." His papers were donated to the National Library of Medicine by Libby Anfinsen between 1998 and 1999.

Career

In 1950, the

National Heart Institute The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is the third largest Institute of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland, United States. It is tasked with allocating about $3.6 billion in FY 2020 in tax revenue to ...

, part of the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in ...

, recruited Anfinsen as chief of its laboratory of

cell physiology Cell physiology is the biological study of the activities that take place in a cell to keep it alive. The term ''physiology'' refers to normal functions in a living organism. Animal cells, plant cells and microorganism cells show similarities in th ...

. In 1954, a

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

fellowship enabled Anfinsen to return to the Carlsberg Laboratory for a year and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship allowed him to study at the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli unive ...

Rehovot, Israel Rehovot ( he, רְחוֹבוֹת ''Rəḥōvōt'', ar, رحوڤوت ''Reḥūfūt'') is a city in the Central District of Israel, about south of Tel Aviv. In it had a population of . Etymology Israel Belkind, founder of the Bilu movement, ...

from 1958 to 1959. He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1958. In 1962, Anfinsen returned to Harvard Medical School as a visiting professor and was invited to become chair of the department of chemistry. He was subsequently appointed chief of the laboratory of chemical biology at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (now the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), where he remained until 1981. In 1981, Anfinsen became a founding member of the

World Cultural Council The World Cultural Council is an international organization whose goals are to promote cultural values, goodwill and philanthropy among individuals. The organization founded in 1981 and based in Mexico, has held a yearly award ceremony since 198 ...

. From 1982 until his death in 1995, Anfinsen was Professor of Biology and (Physical) Biochemistry at

Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he remained for most ...

. Anfinsen published more than 200 original articles, mostly in the area of the relationships between structure and function in proteins, as well as a book, The Molecular Basis of Evolution (1959), in which he described the relationships between protein chemistry and genetics and the promise those areas held for the understanding of evolution. He was also a pioneer of ideas in the area of nucleic acid compaction. In 1961, he showed that

could be refolded after denaturation while preserving enzyme activity, thereby suggesting that all the information required by protein to adopt its final conformation is encoded in its amino-acid sequence. He belonged to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

(USA), the

Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters {{Infobox organization , name = The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters , full_name = , native_name = Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab , native_name_lang = , logo = Royal ...

and the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

Christian B. Anfinsen Award

Established in 1996, The Christian B. Anfinsen Award is presented annually to distinguished scientists, the Awards recognize excellence and outstanding achievements in the multidisciplinary fields of protein science, and honor distinguished contributions in the areas of leadership, education, or service. It is sponsored by The Protein Society, and recognizes significant technical achievements in the field of protein science. Past recipients of the Christian B. Anfinsen Award include: * Donald Hunt (1996) *

Wayne Hendrickson Wayne A. Hendrickson (born April 25, 1941, New York City) is an American biophysicist and University professor at Columbia. Dr. Hendrickson is a University Professor at Columbia University in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics ...

(1997) *James Wells (1998) *

Alan Fersht Sir Alan Roy Fersht (born 21 April 1943) is a British chemist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He was Master of Gonville and Caius C ...

(1999) *

Stephen Benkovic Stephen James Benkovic (born April 20, 1938) is an American chemist. He is Evan Pugh Professor and Eberly Chair in Chemistry at Penn State University. His research has focused on mechanistic enzymology and the discovery of enzyme inhibitors. He ...

(2000) *

Martin Karplus Martin Karplus (born March 15, 1930) is an Austrian and American theoretical chemist. He is the Director of the Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of St ...

(2001) *

Roger Tsien Roger Yonchien Tsien (pronounced , "'' CHEN''"'';'' February 1, 1952 – August 24, 2016) was an American biochemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and was awarded the Nobel Prize in ...

(2002) *

Ada Yonath Ada E. Yonath ( he, עדה יונת, ; born 22 June 1939) is an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of ribosomes. She is the current director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular S ...

(2003) *

Meir Wilchek Meir Wilchek (Hebrew: מאיר אשר וילצ'ק, born 17 October 1935) is an Israeli biochemist. He is a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Early life and education Meir Wilchek was born in Warsaw, Poland, scion of a rabbinical fa ...

(2004) * Matthias Mann (2005) * John R. Yates, III (2006) *Carl Frieden (2007) *

Carol V. Robinson Dame Carol Vivien Robinson, (née Bradley; born 10 April 1956Anon (2015) ) is a British chemist and former President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2018–2020). She was a Royal Society Research Professor and is the Dr Lee's Professor ...

(2008) * Wayne Hubbell (2009) *Yoshinori Fujiyoshi (2010) *D. Wayne Bolen (2011) *Barry Honig (2012) *Tom Alber (2013) * Robert Tycko (2014) *Sachdev Sidhu (2015) *

Andreas Plückthun Andreas Plückthun (born May 7, 1956) is a scientist whose research is focused on the field of protein engineering. Andreas Plückthun is the director of the department of biochemistry at the University of Zurich. Plückthun was appointed to the ...

(2016) *Lewis Kay (2017) *Yifan Cheng (2018)

Selected works

''The Molecular Basis of Evolution''
(1959) *Editor, ''Advances in Protein Chemistry''

References

External links

Christian Anfinsen Papers (1939–1999)
– National Library of Medicine finding aid
The Christian B. Anfinsen Papers
– Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine

Christian Anfinsen Papers 1939-1999 (bulk 1964-1999)
��National Library of Medicine finding aid * including the Nobel lecture December 11, 1972 ''Studies on the Principles that Govern the Folding of Protein Chains'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Anfinsen, Christian B. 1916 births 1995 deaths Nobel laureates in Chemistry American Nobel laureates American biophysicists American Orthodox Jews American people of Norwegian descent Carlsberg Laboratory staff Converts to Judaism from atheism or agnosticism Converts to Orthodox Judaism Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Founding members of the World Cultural Council Jewish American scientists Jewish biologists Jewish chemists Johns Hopkins University faculty Harvard Medical School alumni People from Monessen, Pennsylvania Swarthmore College alumni Swarthmore Garnet Tide football players University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences