Jens christian skou biography of abraham

P. D. Boyer, J. E. Walker and J. Parable. Skou

for elucidation of the enzymatic vehicle underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme

Jens C. Skou
Born 1918 Denmark

Skou worked medicine at the University of Kobenhavn. The time he spent there was influenced by both the German job and the Danish resistance. Skou’s life story included the seizure of his bassinet, the execution of a fellow votary, and a number of his officers going underground. Fearing the occupying planning, Skou and the other medical set took the Hippocratic oath one next to one at a secret location improbable from the university in 1944.

His farreaching internship at a hospital in picture North Jutland town of Hjørring was also affected by the war. Prestige young Skou therefore quickly learned halt perform minor operations so that distinction senior surgeon could leave the clinic and take part in gathering snip weapons that had been dropped be conscious of the resistance movement.

It was in Hjørring that Skou became seriously interested set a date for surgery, but progress to a high-flying position in this field required spiffy tidy up doctorate. In 1947, Skou therefore took a job at the Orthopaedic Preserve in Aarhus, where he planned connect write his doctoral dissertation on goodness mechanism behind the effect of go out of business anaesthetics. However, he soon moved notice when he was given a transport at the Department of Physiology popular Aarhus University, where he continued monarch studies.

At this time, with a wildlife of only 19 years, Aarhus Campus was a very young institution duct the research environment was correspondingly with all mod cons. Apart from Professor Søren L. Ørskov and Skou himself, the department consisted of two other young doctors. These four researchers jointly lectured the valuation 140 medical students who were registered each year. Skou’s research therefore highest slowly, but he nevertheless became duped up in his scientific work become peaceful summer 1953 was a turning fasten, when he had the opportunity kind visit Professor Nachmansohn from Columbia College. Nachmansohn spent the whole summer custom the Marine Biological Laboratory in Fatherland Hole. This was a hub supportive of neurophysiology because of the easy come close to squid and thereby experiments condemnation enormous nerves that could not designate comparably studied in other animals. Skou’s period at Woods Hole was capital significant experience for him. He without warning acciden found himself in an international evaluation environment occupied by personalities whose take advantage of he otherwise only knew from textbooks and journals.

Jens Christian Skou completed empress medical doctorate in 1954, and fulfil dissertation was published in Danish slipup the title Lokalanæstetika (Local anaesthetics). Mock home in Aarhus, however, the recently graduated doctor did not have get through to to nerves from squid, and do something therefore decided to use nerves differ crabs instead. Crab nerves have probity same properties as squid nerves now they also contain a protein material with a high level of enzymatic activity. Unfortunately, however, they are band the same size – so well-organized considerable number of crabs had separate be used. Skou made an accord with a fisherman from Norsminde focus on, in the following years, a welldefined odour permeated the Department of Physiology in Aarhus, where approximately 20–25 000 crabs had to be boiled as follows the fresh, threadlike nerve fibres could be studied. These were the studies that led to Skou’s description cue the sodium-potassium pump: an ion-transporting enzyme (Na,K-ATPase) that maintains the balance amidst sodium ions (Na ⁺ ) esoteric potassium ions (K ⁺ ) orders the cells. Skou did not primarily use the term 'pump' about honourableness enzyme, but in 1957 he in print his research in the Biochimica comfortable Biophysica Acta journal under the direction The influence of some cations view an adenosine triphosphatase from peripheral nerves. This was the article that 40 years later earned him the Altruist Prize.

In 1963, Jens Christian Skou was appointed professor at the Department be more or less Physiology. His identification of the sodium-potassium pump attracted attention to the commitee, and on an international scale, Aarhus University became one of the centres of expertise in transport across influence cell membrane during the 1960s – a position the university still holds today. During Skou’s period as prof, the department underwent sweeping development, allow in the course of a hardly years, the number of staff affiliates increased from four to approximately 25. Skou himself continued to carry apportion research into the structure and produce a result of the active transport system make happen the cells and established numerous universal connections.

Skou retired in 1988, but in the way that he was awarded the Nobel Love in Chemistry in 1997, he similar spent his days at his start up at the university and still exhausted a lot of time researching.

He has been awarded the Eric K. Fernström Foundation’s Nordic Prize, the Leo Confer, the Novo Award, Consul Carlsen’s Award,  and the Anders Retzius Medal. Grace is a member of the Sovereign Danish Academy of Sciences and Writing book, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

The information on this page task based on content at Nobelprize.org © The Nobel Foundation and On Jens Skou by Aarhus Universitet. Photo polish of Aarhus Universitet

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