Vernon Ingram

Vernon Martin Ingram, Ph.D., FRS ( born May 19, 1924 in Wroclaw, Lower Silesia, † August 17 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts ) was a German - American biologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Biography

Ingram was the then Lower Silesia born in 1924 in Breslau. Because of their opposition to Nazism left his family Nazi Germany was 14 years old with him as Ingram. They lived first in England. During the Second World War, Ingram worked in a chemical factory and studied at night at Birkbeck College, University of London. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1945 and 1949, a PhD in organic chemistry. After his doctorate, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller Institute and Yale University. At the " Rockefeller ", he worked with Moses Kunitz in the crystallization of proteins. During his time at Yale he studied with Joseph Fruton with peptide chemistry. In 1952 he returned to England and began his work at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge with studies of protein chemistry. 1956 showed Ingram, John A. Hunt and Antony OW Stretton that sickle cell anemia is caused by a replacement of a glutamic acid for a valine in hemoglobin. Ingram use for the detection of amino acids exchange electrophoretic and chromatographic methods. Max Perutz and Francis Crick support the work of Ingram and his colleagues. He was awarded the 1967 William Allan Award from the American Society of Human Genetics. Ingram's work for the first time showed that a disease can be caused by a replacement of a single amino acid in a protein. Therefore Ingram is sometimes referred to as the "father of molecular medicine ."

In 1958, Ingram to MIT. He initially wanted to stay only one year. But he liked it so much that he stayed. During his time at MIT, he worked with Paul Marks of Columbia University on hemoglobin. He began to take an interest also for fetal hemoglobin, which is different from that of adults. In the 1980s, Ingram increasingly interested for Alzheimer's research. After his retirement he continued his work at MIT continuously in a small laboratory. He and his wife were over 16 years, the house parents of the student residence Ashdown House at MIT. In his honor, the asteroid is named 6285 Ingram. in 2002 was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Ingram died on August 17, 2006 in Boston as a result of an accident.