Henrik Dam
Carl Peter Henrik Dam ( born February 21, 1895 in Copenhagen, Denmark, † April 18, 1976 ) was a Danish physiologist and biochemist.
Life
Dam acquired in 1920 with a degree in chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute in Copenhagen and then went as an assistant at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen, in 1923 as an assistant at the Department of Biochemistry and Physiology, University of Copenhagen. In 1925 he studied microchemistry in Graz with Fritz Pregl and in 1928 Assistant Professor, 1929 Associate Professor at the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Copenhagen. With a thesis on the biological significance of sterols, he earned a Ph.D. in 1934 in biochemistry.
1932-1933 Dam went for continuing the work on the metabolism of steroids to Freiburg im Breisgau to Rudolph Schönheimer, 1935 Paul Karrer ( Zurich ).
During a lecture tour in Canada and the United States 1940-1941, the occupation of Denmark was carried out by German troops ( April 1940 ). 1942-1945 he worked as a researcher at the University of Rochester (Rochester (New York)) and then at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University). In the absence he got a reputation as a professor of biochemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Copenhagen, Dam but returned after the war ended in 1946 after Copenhagen back. 1956-1962 he was head of the biochemistry of the Danish Fat Research Institute.
Dam has published 315 articles and was a member of several scientific associations.
Scientific Importance
In his work on the sterol metabolism in chickens in Copenhagen he discovered vitamin K. When feeding a cholesterol - free diet started in animals massive bleeding ( hemorrhage ). As a result, he examined the isolation and purification (along with Karrer ), the chemical and physical properties and biological function of the newly discovered vitamin.
For the discovery of vitamin K, he received in 1943, together with Edward Adelbert Doisy the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
1960 awarded him the German Society for Fat Science the Wilhelm Normann Medal.