James Collip
James Bertram Collip ( born November 20, 1892 in Belleville, Ontario ( Canada); † June 19, 1965 ) was a Canadian biochemist. He belonged to the group of researchers from Toronto, the isolated insulin. Collip was dean of the medical faculty at the University of Western Ontario, where he was also a member of the Kappa Alpha Society.
Research
Training and initial teaching and research
At the age of 15, he was admitted at Trinity College, University of Toronto and studied physiology and biochemistry. In 1916 he received his doctorate at the University of Toronto in biochemistry.
In 1915, at the age of 22 years, Collip took shortly before completing his doctoral work on a position as a lecturer in Edmonton at the Medical Faculty of the University of Alberta. He remained there for 13 years, where he was in 1920 promoted to professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry. During this time, Collip researching in the field of chemistry of the blood of vertebrate and invertebrate animals.
Collip took from April 1921 a sabbatical and went supported by a Rockefeller scholarship to Toronto to work with Professor John JR MacLeod for six months at the Department of Physiology, University of Toronto. There, his research led him ( on the effect of pH on the concentration of sugar in the blood) to marine biological stations in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole ) and St. Andrews ( New Brunswick) (Huntsman Marine Science Centre) before end of the year returned to Toronto.
The discovery of insulin
MacLeod supervised the research of Frederick Banting and Charles Best, who were looking for a treatment for diabetes mellitus since May 1921. In December, when Banting and Best had difficulties to refine the extract of the pancreas, MacLeod, Collip exempt from all other duties, to enable him to join the research group. Collips task was to produce insulin in a purer and brauchbarerer form, as it managed to Banting and Best at this time. Within a month Collip reached the goal of producing an extract of the pancreas, whose purity was sufficient for clinical trials.
Soon, successful tests were completed and the future of insulin was assured. Banting, Best and Collip subsequently shared the patent for insulin, which they sold at the University of Toronto symbolic of a dollar.
Due to disagreements between Banting and MacLeod came within the team to regrettably hostility. In 1923, Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Banting was the view, Best had been passed over, and divided his share with him. MacLeod told in response his share with Collip. However, it was largely forgotten that Collip and MacLeod were co-discoverer of insulin.
Other activities
After this early success Collip returned to Edmonton at the university resume his work again and pursue his own studies of hormone research. He is regarded as a pioneer of endocrine research. Other pioneering work Collip to the hormone ACTH.
He died at the age of 72 years.
Honors
(selected)
- Member of the Royal Society of Canada, 1925
- Member of the Leopoldina, 1932
- Member of the Royal Society, 1933
- D.Sc., Harvard University, 1936
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 1943
- D.Sc., University of Oxford, 1946
- Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm (U.S. ), 1947
- Banting Medal of the American Diabetes Association, 1960
- Honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario, 1964