John Jacob Abel

John Jacob Abel
Born	19 May 1857 Cleveland, Ohio
Died	26 May 1938
Nationality	American
Fields	biochemist pharmacologist
Institutions	Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Alma mater	University of Michigan
Notable awards	Foreign Member of the Royal Society Willard Gibbs Award (1927)

John Jacob Abel (19 May 1857 – 26 May 1938) was an influential American biochemist and pharmacologist.

Early life

Born to George M. and Mary (Becker) Abel near Cleveland, Ohio, he graduated with a B.A. in 1883 from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Henry Sewall. Abel received a M.D. at Strasburg in 1888.

Career

In 1891 he founded and chaired the first department of pharmacology in the United States at the University of Michigan. In 1893, he went on to chair the pharmacology department at Johns Hopkins University. In 1897, he was the second to isolate epinephrine, also known as adrenaline (the first was Napoleon Cybulski in 1895), although the extracts he produced have been shown to be mostly an inactive metabolite and the first pure extracts were produced by the Japanese Jokichi Takamine (1854–1922) who patented the formulation under the name adrenalin. He later formulated the idea of the artificial kidney and in 1914 he isolated amino acids from the blood.

He spent years unsuccessfully searching for the pituitary hormone, unaware that he was in fact looking for several hormones. In 1926, he reported the isolation and crystallization of insulin, though this announcement was met with considerable scepticism and not generally accepted for many years.

Abel also co-founded the Journal of Biological Chemistry with Christian Archibald Herter in 1905 and the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in 1909.

Abel was one of the many students of Oswald Schmiederberg who founded pharmacology departments all over the world including Genoa, Heidelberg, Berlin, Padua, Japan, Edinburgh, and the United States. Oswald Schmiederberg was an ordinarius in pharmacology in Dorpat (1869–1872) and the University of Strassburg in France (1872–1918) and one of the major influences in the spread and development of pharmacology in the 19th century.

Private life

He married Mary Hinman in 1883.

External links

• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir