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Anfinsen at SwarthmoreImage Modified

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Swarthmore College, 1937
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National Library of Medicine
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In 1916, Christian Boehmer Anfinsen, Jr, was born in Monessen, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. His father was a mechanical engineer; both he and his wife, Sophie Rasmussen Anfinsen, were Norwegian immigrants. In 1933, Anfinsen was admitted to Swarthmore College on a scholarship, where he studied chemistry and played football while working as a waiter in the dining hall. He then went on to the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining an M.S. in organic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Anfinsen was fortunate to spend formative time overseas early in his career. Particularly important was an American Scandinavian Foundation fellowship in Kaj Linderstrom-Lang’s Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1939. The Carlsberg Laboratory was a natural fit for the son of Norwegian immigrants. Although World War II cut his fellowship short in 1940, Anfinsen developed new methods for studying proteins while in Copenhagen.

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Anfinsen at the University of PennsylvaniaImage Modified

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University of Pennsylvania, 1939
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National Library of Medicine


Anfinsen in a lab in CopenhagenImage Modified

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Anfinsen during his fellowship at Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1939-40.

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In 1947, Anfinsen spent a second productive period abroad, this time in Hugo Theorell's laboratory at the Medical Nobel Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Theorell would win the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on enzymes, proteins that catalyze or accelerate biological reactions.

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Hugo Theorell with his Geiger-Muller counterImage Modified

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Hugo Theorell with his Geiger-Muller counter for detecting radioactivity in his laboratory at the Medical Nobel Institute in Sweden.
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Courtesy of Karolinska Instituet

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Anfinsen was recruited to the National Heart Institute (now the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute) at the NIH in 1950, a time when scientists were just beginning to explore the new fields of genetics and molecular biology, rooted in the classic discipline of chemistry. Here Anfinsen combined his research on the structure and function of proteins with investigations into cardiology-related areas such as lipids (fats).


'The field of protein chemistry has now reached a stage of relative sophistication allowing us to think of proteins as organic chemicals rather than as conglomerates of amino acids.' Quote from Christian Anfinsen, The Molecular Basis of Evolution, 1959Image Modified

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This 1951 photo from the NIH Record highlighted studies by Anfinsen and Daniel Steinberg on the mechanism of protein synthesis. During the first decade at NIH, Anfinsen conducted research on cholesterol and lipoprotein metabolism as related to atherosclerosis, as well as on protein structure that included isolating enzymes and separating proteins into their constituent amino acids. These early protein studies were stepping stones to analyzing the stability of the three-dimensional protein structure and protein “folding” in the later 1950s and early 1960s for which he is best known today.

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