Early years Northrop was born in
Yonkers, New York to
John Isaiah, a
zoologist and instructor at Columbia University who is a member of the
Havemeyer family, and
Alice Rich Northrop, a teacher of botany at Hunter College. His father died in a lab explosion two weeks before John H. Northrop was born. The son was educated at
Yonkers High School and
Columbia University, where he earned his BA in 1912 and PhD in chemistry in 1915. During
World War I, he conducted research for the
U.S. Chemical Warfare Service on the production of
acetone and
ethanol through
fermentation. This work led to studying enzymes.
Research In 1929, Northrop isolated and crystallized the gastric enzyme
pepsin and determined that it was a
protein. For this achievement, he was elected to the United States
National Academy of Sciences in 1934. In 1938 he isolated and crystallized the first
bacteriophage (a small virus that attacks
bacteria), and determined that it was a
nucleoprotein. He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society that same year. Northrop also isolated and crystallized pepsinogen (the precursor to pepsin),
trypsin,
chymotrypsin, and
carboxypeptidase. For his 1939 book,
Crystalline Enzymes: The Chemistry of Pepsin, Trypsin, and Bacteriophage, Northrop was awarded the
Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the
National Academy of Sciences. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1949. Northrop was employed by the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City from 1916 until his retirement in 1961. In 1949 he joined the
University of California, Berkeley as Professor of Bacteriology, and later, he was appointed Professor of Biophysics.
Personal life In 1917, Northrop married Louise Walker (1891–1975), with whom he had two children: John, an oceanographer, and Alice, who married Nobel laureate
Frederick C. Robbins. The family lived in a small home just outside of Mt. Vernon, New York. As their children grew older and Northrop looked for a more desirable workplace, the family bought a home in Cotuit, Massachusetts. This move shortened Northrop's commute to the laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, and also put him in closer contact with the wilderness which he greatly enjoyed. Northrop committed suicide in
Wickenburg, Arizona in 1987. == References ==