Paul D. Boyer
Paul D. Boyer
Paul Delos Boyeris an American biochemist, analytical chemist, and a professor of chemistry at University of California Los Angeles. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research on the "enzymatic mechanism underlying the biosynthesis of adenosine triphosphate"with John E. Walker, making Boyer the only Utah-born Nobel laureate; the remainder of the Prize in that year was awarded to Danish chemist Jens Christian Skou for his discovery of the Na+/K+-ATPase...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth31 July 1918
CountryUnited States of America
In marked contrast to the University of Wisconsin, Biochemistry was hardly visible at Stanford in 1945, consisting of only two professors in the chemistry department.
During my early years at Minnesota I conducted an evening enzyme seminar.
An unexpected benefit of my career in biochemistry has been travel.
A painstaking course in qualitative and quantitative analysis by John Wing gave me an appreciation of the need for, and beauty of, accurate measurement.
Concentrated serum albumin fractionated from blood plasma was effective in battlefield treatment of shock.
I am told that I had a bad temper, and remember being banished to the back hall until civility returned.
More by example than by word, my father taught me logical reasoning, compassion, love of others, honesty, and discipline applied with understanding.
The excitement of vitamins, nutrition and metabolism permeated the environment.
I have a tendency to be lucky and make the right choices based on limited information.
I participated on debating teams and in student government, and served as senior class president.
It was always assumed that I would go to college.
The Brigham Young University (BYU) campus was just a few blocks from my home and tuition was minimal.
The experience reminds me of a favorite saying: Most of the yield from research efforts comes from the coal that is mined while looking for diamonds.
In 1956 I accepted a Hill Foundation Professorship and moved to the medical school campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.