Stanford Moore
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Stanford Moore
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1972
Born: 4 September 1913, Chicago, IL, USA
Died: 23 August 1982, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Prize motivation: “for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule”
Prize share: 1/4
Work
The genetic information of an organism is stored in DNA molecules which, via RNA molecules, are converted during the formation of proteins. The chemical processes inside cells are controlled by a type of protein called enzymes. Stanford Moore and William Stein studied the enzyme ribonuclease, which divides RNA into smaller components. In the late 1950s, the pair succeeded in providing a detailed understanding of the enzyme's active center and in elucidating the connection between the structure of the molecule and its ability to speed up biochemical reactions.
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