John Tileston Edsall (3 November 1902 – 12 June 2002) was a protein scientist, who contributed significantly to the understanding of the

hydrophobic interaction In chemistry, hydrophobicity is the physical property of a molecule that is seemingly intermolecular force, repelled from a mass of water (known as a hydrophobe). In contrast, hydrophiles are attracted to water. Hydrophobic molecules tend t ...

Early life

Born in Philadelphia, John Edsall moved to Boston with his family at the age of 10. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in chemistry. At Harvard he was a good friend of the physicist

Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...

. He wrote an account of his life and career in a review.

Protein research

Edsall worked with

Edwin Cohn Edwin Joseph Cohn (December 17, 1892 – October 1, 1953) was a protein scientist. A graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover 911 and the University of Chicago 914, PhD 1917 he made important advances in the physical chemistry of proteins, and was r ...

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 ...

to apply protein methods to

blood fractionation Blood fractionation is the process of fractionating whole blood, or separating it into its component parts. This is typically done by centrifuging the blood. The resulting components are: * a clear solution of blood plasma in the upper pha ...

. Subsequently, in 1943, they published a book ''Proteins, Amino Acids and Peptides''. This had a profound influence on the next generation of protein scientists. Long afterwards Edsall wrote an account of his interaction with Cohn. He published numerous papers on protein chemistry, including work on myosin, fibrinogen, light scattering, measurement of tyrosine groups by ultraviolet spectroscopy, and carbonic anhydrase.

Advances in Protein Chemistry

In 1944 John Edsall was a founding co-editor of the journal ''Advances in Protein Chemistry''. He was invited by the publisher Kurt Jacoby and the founding editor Tim Anson, whom he had met in 1924 in Cambridge (although they were both undergraduates at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

at nearly the same time). He remained series editor up to volume 47 (1995).

The ''Journal of Biological Chemistry''

From 1958 to 1967 Edsall was chief editor of the ''

Journal of Biological Chemistry The ''Journal of Biological Chemistry'' (''JBC'') is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1905., jbc.org Since 1925, it is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It covers research in ...

'', years that Irving Klotz described in the following terms:

These years cover the period of the transition from a stodgy classical journal to a modern exciting one, reflecting the rise of molecular biological approaches.

At his retirement from the editorship

Konrad Bloch Konrad Emil Bloch (; 21 January 1912 – 15 October 2000) was a German-American biochemist. Bloch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1964 (joint with Feodor Lynen) for discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the ...

published a tribute to him in the Journal.

Teaching and students

He was Professor at the Harvard University. He inspired medical student

Alexander Rich Alexander Rich (15 November 1924 – 27 April 2015) was an American biologist and biophysicist. He was the William Thompson Sedgwick Professor of Biophysics at MIT (since 1958) and Harvard Medical School. Rich earned an A.B. (''magna cum laud ...

to pursue an academic career.

Historical interests

Edsall was active in preserving the history of protein science.

Personal history

John T. Edsall married Margaret Dunham of Scarsdale, NY, May 1, 1929, in Scarsdale. They had three sons: James Lawrence Dunham Edsall (known always as Lawrence), June 6, 1930 - July 8, 1978; David T. Edsall, born 1933, and Nicholas C. Edsall, born 1936. Margaret D. Edsall was born in New York, NY, June 9, 1902, and died May 19, 1987. They lived most of their married life in Cambridge, MA.

References

External links

Harvard University Gazette tribute to Edsallwww.harvardsquarelibrary.org/cfs2/john_edsall.phpNational Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Edsall, John Tileston American biochemists American molecular biologists Harvard University faculty 1902 births 2002 deaths Harvard College alumni Scientists from Philadelphia Journal of Biological Chemistry editors Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences