Harland G. Wood
Harland Goff Wood ( born September 2, 1907 in Delavan, Minnesota, † September 12, 1991 ) was an American biochemist.
Life and work
Harland Goff Wood is a descendant of William Goffe, to one of the 59 signatories of the death sentence against King Charles I of England, 1649.
Wood acquired in 1931 at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a master's in chemistry. In 1935, he earned at Iowa State College (later Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa, a Ph.D. in bacteriology and cleared together with Chester Werkman (1893-1962) on the propionic acid fermentation. The local integration of carbon dioxide ( CO2) into larger molecules by bacteria at the time was highly controversial. As a postdoctoral fellow Wood went to WH Petersen at the University of Wisconsin, where he was able to show, together with the later Nobel laureate Edward Lawrie Tatum that microorganisms vitamin B1 required for their growth.
1936 Wood received a position as assistant professor of bacteriology at Iowa State College, where he met with 13CO2 - obtained by Alfred Nier - ultimately could prove that carbon dioxide is fixed in the carboxyl groups of succinate. Based on Woods work was Earl Evans (1910-1999) and Louis Slotin 1940 show with 11CO2 that in humans takes place CO2 fixation.
At the University of Minnesota, where Wood in 1943 as an Associate Professor of Physiology, he examined using [ 13C] NaHCO3 ( sodium hydrogen carbonate) CO2 fixation in animals. In 1946, Wood as the new chair of biochemistry at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, which later became the Case Western Reserve University ( CWRU ). Here he made extensive use of the tracer method to elucidate various metabolic pathways. In 1965 he was head of the biochemistry department, but retained a professorship and was scientifically also about his retirement in 1978 very active, he still mostly dealt with the metabolism of carbonic acid. Another project dealt with the kinetics, structure, sequence and genetics of transcarboxylase (TC ) from Propionibacterium acnes or to the Role of pyrophosphate and polyphosphates in energy metabolism.
Wood was married to Mildred Davis since 1929. The couple had three daughters. Harland Woods grave is located in Minnesota.
Awards (selection)
At Case Western Reverse University School of Medicine a building is named after Wood. In his honor, a lecture will be held annually.