Historical Tidbit – Vincent Du Vigneaud (May 18, 1901 to December 11, 1978) Nobel Laureate for peptide hormone synthesis
Alan D. Rogol, MD, Ph.D.
Vincent Du Vigneaud earned his doctorate in chemistry at the Rochester School of Medicine in 1927 working on the biochemistry of sulfur containing compounds, specifically the sulfur of insulin. He became professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry at Cornell in 1938 after academic positions at Johns Hopkins, and in Dresden and Edinburgh. He studied the biochemistry of oxytocin and vasopressin (Experientia. 1955;(Suppl 2):9-26.). His major contribution was the determination of the primary structures of oxytocin and vasopressin and then their synthesis, by the nitrophenylester method (Nature 1959;183:1324-5). He received the Nobel Prize in 1955 in chemistry “for his work on biochemically important sulfur compounds, especially for the synthesis of a peptide hormone, oxytocin” (Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB).