"Organic Chemist" Bernhard Witkop Hand Signed 4X5 B&W Photo For Sale
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"Organic Chemist" Bernhard Witkop Hand Signed 4X5 B&W Photo:
$349.99
Up for sale a RARE! "Organic Chemist" Bernhard Witkop Hand Signed 4X5 B&W Photo.
ES-1401B
Bernhard Witkop (May 9, 1917
in Freiburg, Baden – November 22, 2010 in Chevy Chase, Maryland) was
a German-born American organic chemist who worked for the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) for 37 years. During
those years, Dr. Witkop – along with his recruit, the late Dr. John Daly, and
others – discovered the NIH shift, a term describing the adjacent carbons on aromatic rings during
oxidation, a process key in developing many therapies. He also helped to develop selective methods for
the non-enzymatic cleavage of proteins, which enabled the sequencing of amino acids in proteins as large as immunoglobulin, a method later used in the production of human insulin. Dr. Witkop also helped pioneer the NIH Visiting
Fellow Program. Among other foreign scientists, he began attracting visiting
researchers to the program from Japan as early as 1955. He traveled frequently
to Japan, where he gave talks in classical Japanese. In 1975, Witkop received
the Order of the Sacred
Treasure, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan. “He
brought in the first visiting fellow from Japan at a time when we were still in
the shadow of World War II,” said Dr. Kenneth Jacobson, Chief of the NIDDK
Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry. “He broke the ice.” Other honors, among
many, included election to the National Academy of
Sciences (1969) and the American Philosophical
Society (1999) as well as the Paul Karrer Gold Medal from
the University of Zurich (1971). Even
long after most lights at NIH darkened, Dr. Witkop might still be found working
in his lab. Thomas Witkop remembers going to visit his father at his West
Virginia cabin one evening, and finding all signs that his father was present,
except his father. “At approximately 4 a.m., he came rolling back up to the
cabin. Apparently, he was at the cabin, had some big idea and drove to the lab
at NIH in the middle of the night, did whatever he needed to do, and then came
back.” Dr. Witkop served as head of the NIDDK Laboratory of Chemistry for 30
years. He was appointed an NIH Institute Scholar in 1987 and a Scholar Emeritus
in 1993. Dr. Witkop’s early career coincided with World War II. A German native
and Jewish on his mother’s side, he gave much of the credit for his shelter
from the Nazis to his mentor at the University of Munich,
the Nobel Prize-winner Heinrich Wieland. After a few years at Harvard University, Dr.
Witkop came to NIH as a fellow in the United
States Public Health Service in 1950. Thomas Witkop said his
father’s NIH service was a high point of his life. In addition to his son, Dr.
Witkop is survived by his wife of 65 years, Marlene Prinz Witkop; daughters
Cornelia Hess and Phyllis Kasper; a sister; and seven grandchildren.
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