Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks

Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks ( born October 16, 1888 in Pittsburgh, † March 1981 in San Francisco) was an American biologist who discovered an antidote to cyanide and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Life

Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks was born in 1888 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Rudolph and Selma ( Neuffer ) Moldenhauer. She graduated from the High School for Girls in Philadelphia and received her BA and MA degrees at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1920, she earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University.

She first worked from 1917 to 1920 as a bacteriologist at the Research Institute of the National Dental Association in Cleveland. There she met her husband, the zoologist Sumner Cushing Brooks ( 1888-1948 ). In 1917 she got married. 1920 Matilda Brooks began to work as a biologist for the United States Public Health Service. In 1927, she went into the physiological research at the University of California, Berkeley. She was referring there no salary because her husband worked as a professor at the same university and it was at this time does not allow married couples taking two paid positions in a department. However, they got refunded and paid assistants for their expenses.

Matilda Brooks work was supported by various well-known organizations. So they moved into a bachelor's fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences, the Naples - research grant from the National Research Council and grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Permanent Science Foundation. As one of the few women she was a member of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In Woods Hole, the couple Brooks held on in the summer and doing research, while the rest lived in California and worked.

1932 discovered Matilda Brooks during their research on the oxidation-reduction reaction in living cells that the methylene blue dye is suitable for the treatment of cyanide and carbon monoxide poisoning. In the first time it was in this way a young man to be saved, who had tried to take his own life with cyanide.

When her husband became ill in 1934 and 1936, Matilda Brooks took over his courses at the university. Later she taught at times, together and took a 1944 lecture tour of South America. They published scientific articles and a book under the title The Permeability of Living Cells ( 1941).

1948 died her husband due to a heart attack. Matilda Brooks died in 1981 in San Francisco.

Publications (excerpt)

• Comperative studies on respiration. The Journal of general physiology, Laboratory of Plant Physiology, Harvard University, Cambridge 1919 ( online; PDF file, 472 kB).
• Studies on the permeability of living cells. IX. Does methylene blue Itself penetrate? University of California press, Berkeley, Calif. , 1927.
• Studies on the permeability of living cells. XI. The Penetration of thionins into Valonia. University of California press, Berkeley, Calif. , 1930.
• The effect of methylene blue on HCN and CO poisoning. American Journal of Physiology, September 1932, vol. 102 no 1145-147.
• The effects of methylene blue and other oxidation - reduction indicators on experimental tumors. University of California press, Berkeley, Calif. , 1934.
• With Sumner Cushing Brooks: The permeability of living cells. Berlin -Zehlendorf, brothers Borntraeger, 1941.
• Methylene blue, potassium cyanide and carbon monoxide as indicators for studying the oxidation - reduction potentials of Developing marine eggs. The Biological Bulletin, The Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, and the University of California, Berkeley 1943 ( online; PDF file, 1.61 MB ).
• Negative oxidation - reduction potentials Resulting from the use of auxin in plants and tobacco smoke on animal cells. Springer, 1959, protoplasm Volume 51, Number 4, 620-631.
• Nicotine as a redox -reducing reagent Producing abnormal growth in animal cells. Springer, 1961 protoplasm Volume 53, Number 2, 212-219.