Paul Delos Boyer
Boyer, Paul Delos (1918-), an American biochemist, discovered the mechanism that produces energy in living cells. His work contributed to a better understanding of the basic chemistry of life. Boyer was awarded half of the 1997 Nobel Prize in chemistry, which he shared with British chemist John Ernest Walker. The other half of the prize was awarded to Danish chemist Jens Christian Skou.
Boyer was born and raised in Provo, Utah. His father, Dell Delos Boyer, was an osteopathic physician. When Boyer was 15, his mother died of Addison's disease. Her illness sparked Boyer's later interest in biochemistry. As a boy, Boyer enjoyed family trips to nearby parks in southern Utah as well as Yellowstone National Park.
At 16, Boyer graduated as valedictorian from Provo High School. He enrolled at Brigham Young University near his home and participated in a variety of activities, including student government. In 1939, he received a scholarship to pursue graduate studies in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. That year, Boyer married Lyda Whicker. The couple had three children.
By the time Boyer earned his Ph.D. in 1943, the United States was involved in World War II (1939-1945). As part of the war effort, he went to Stanford University in California to study blood plasma protein. Serum albumin from blood plasma was an effective treatment for soldiers suffering from battlefield shock. But when the albumin solution was heated to kill microorganisms and viruses, it became cloudy from protein denaturation. Boyer joined a research team that developed a method to stabilize the solution and reverse the denaturation. The method is still in use.
In 1945, Boyer took a position as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. His teaching career was interrupted, when he was drafted into the U.S. Navy. He served a year at the Navy Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1946, he moved to St. Paul, where he joined the university's biochemistry faculty. In 1956, he accepted an appointment as Hill Foundation professor at the medical school campus in Minneapolis.
As part of his research in the early 1950's, Boyer began researching adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is often called the powerhouse of the cells because it is responsible for converting nutrients into energy in cells. This energy is used for functions such as muscle contraction and protein building.
In 1963, Boyer left Minnesota to become a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Two years later, he became director of that university's newly created Molecular Biology Institute. There he kept his administrative duties to a minimum in order to have enough time to work with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Lyda Whicker Boyer worked as an editor at UCLA and helped her husband with the 18-volume series, The Enzymes.
By 1971, Boyer had made considerable progress in understanding ATP synthesis. In the following decade, he made additional discoveries regarding the three postulates for the binding mechanism of ATP synthesis. Further testing by Boyer and his research team confirmed the results. Boyer showed that the enzyme ATP synthase aids the production of ATP, and John Ernest Walker of the United Kingdom discovered the structure of ATP synthase. For their work, the two scientists shared half the 1997 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The other half of the prize was awarded to Jens Skou of Denmark.
In 1955, Boyer received the award in enzyme chemistry of the American Chemical Society. He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to take a sabbatical and conduct research in Sweden at the Wenner-Gren Institute of the University of Stockholm and at the Nobel Medical Institute. He served as chairman of the biochemistry section of the American Chemical Society from 1959 to 1960. From 1969 to 1970, he was the president of the American Society of Biological Chemists. In 1970, he was named professor emeritus of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. In 1989, he received the Rose Award of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.