| Earl Stadtman | |
| Birth Name: | Earl Reece Stadtman |
| Birth Date: | 15 November 1919 |
| Birth Place: | Carrizozo, New Mexico, USA |
| Death Place: | Derwood, Maryland, USA |
| Fields: | Biochemistry |
| Workplaces: | Georgetown University, Washington, DC; University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland; Johns Hopkins University; National Heart Institute, Bethesda, Maryland; many visiting appointments |
| Education: | University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1949) |
| Thesis Title: | 'Mechanisms of Fatty Acid Synthesis by Clostridium kluyveri |
| Academic Advisors: | Horace Barker |
| Known For: | Fatty aid biosynthesis, glutamine dehydrogenase, cycles of interconvertible enzymes |
| Awards: | Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, National Medal of Science, many others |
| Spouse: | Thressa Campbell Stadtman |
| Children: | None |
Earl Reece Stadtman NAS (November 15, 1919 – January 7, 2008)[1] was an American biochemist,[2] [3] notable for his research on enzymes[4] and anaerobic bacteria.
Stadtman started his career as a research assistant in the Division of Plant Nutrition of the University of California. Subsequently he was an Atomic Energy Commission Fellow with Fritz Lipmann in the Massachusetts General Hospital, but after 1960 he worked at the National Heart Institute,where he became chief of the Laboratory of Biochemistry. In addition, he spent sabbatical periods at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and the Pasteur Institute in Paris.[3]
In 1944 Earl Stadtman married Thressa Campbell, also a distinguished scientist, the discoverer of selenocysteine. They had no children during their marriage of more than sixty years.[5]
Stadtman's research covered a wide field. Early in his career he worked with Horace Barker on bacterial fatty-acid synthesis, with a series of four papers.[6] In the same period he collaborated with Fritz Lipmann on the function of coenzyme A.[7] Later his work took on a more enzymological character, with investigation of, for example, aldehyde dehydrogenase,[8] aspartate kinase,[9] work carried out during a period in the laboratory of Georges Cohen in France and, most notably, glutamine synthetase,[10] an enzyme that will always be associated with his name.
From the 1970s onwards Stadtman published many papers with P. Boon Chock on the capacity of cycles of interconvertible enzymes, based especially on his results with glutamine synthetase, to generate very high sensitivity to effectors.[11]
Stadtman was active as an editor of numerous prominent journals, including the Journal of Biological Chemistry, 1960–1965, Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 1960–1969; Annual Review of Biochemistry, 1972–2000; Biochemistry, 1969–1976; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1974–1981; Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 1975–1978.
He was (with Bernard Horecker) founding editor of Current Topics in Cellular Regulation, a major series in the subject, and continued in the role up to volume 23 (1984).