Robert L. Hill (biochemist)

Last updated
Robert L. Hill
Born1928
Died(2012-11-29)November 29, 2012
Nationality American
Scientific career
Fields Biochemistry
Institutions Duke University School of Medicine
Doctoral advisor Russell Mills

Robert L. Hill (1928-2012) was a biochemist who spent most of his career on the faculty at Duke University School of Medicine, from which he retired as the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus. Hill's research focused on the chemistry of enzymes, with particular specialization in glycosyltransferases and glycobiology.

Contents

Hill was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974, the National Academy of Sciences in 1975, the Institute of Medicine in 1978. He served on the editorial board of the scientific journal Journal of Biological Chemistry beginning in 1965 and as associate editor from 1988 to 2012, where he initiated a regular feature series called "Classics" in which the journal reprinted selected papers of high historical significance. [1] [2] Hill died on November 29, 2012. [1]

Early life and education

Hill was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1928. He was an undergraduate at the University of Kansas and received a B.S. in chemistry in 1949. He remained there for graduate work under the supervision of Russell Mills, and received his Ph.D. in 1954. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah with Emil L. Smith. [1] [2]

Academic career

Hill joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 1956. Philip Handler, then chair of the biochemistry department at Duke University School of Medicine, recruited Hill to move to Duke. Hill moved in 1961 and remained at Duke for the rest of his career. [1] [2] He was named to the James B. Duke professorship in 1965 [2] and served as department chair from 1969 to 1993, succeeding Handler after the latter assumed the presidency of the National Academy of Sciences. [3]

Hill was active in service and leadership roles in scientific societies, particularly the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, of which he was president in 1976. [2] He served on the editorial boards of several journals and had a particularly long association with the Journal of Biological Chemistry . He joined the editorial board in 1965 and became associate editor in 1988, a role he kept after his retirement from Duke and until shortly before his death in 2012. At JBC he initiated and co-curated the JBC Classics series, which reprinted papers from the journal archives of particularly high scientific impact. Along with Smith and Handler, Hill co-edited a foundational textbook in biochemistry from 1968 to 1978. [1] [2]

Research

Hill developed an interest in protein chemistry during his postdoctoral work and became known for his studies of hemoglobin while at Utah. He made major contributions to the study of immunoglobulin structure and was particularly influential in the field of glycobiology, which became a major focus of his work after he and collaborating scientists discovered that lactose synthetase contains a glycosyltransferase enzyme. [1]

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

Carlos Bustamante American biophysicist

Carlos José Bustamante is a Peruvian-American scientist. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Joseph L. Goldstein scientist

Joseph Leonard Goldstein ForMemRS is an American biochemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1985, along with fellow University of Texas Southwestern researcher, Michael Brown, for their studies regarding cholesterol. They discovered that human cells have low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors that remove cholesterol from the blood and that when LDL receptors are not present in sufficient numbers, individuals develop hypercholesterolemia and become at risk for cholesterol related diseases, notably coronary heart disease. Their studies led to the development of statin drugs.

Clinton Edward Ballou is a professor emeritus of biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focused on the metabolism of carbohydrates and the structures of microbial cell walls. He joined the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1975.

Baldomero Olivera is a Filipino chemist known for discovery of many cone snail toxins important for neuroscience. These molecules, called conotoxins, led to a breakthrough in the study of ion channels and neuromuscular synapses. He discovered and first characterized E. coli DNA ligase, a key enzyme of genetic engineering and recombinant DNA technology.

Philip Handler was an American nutritionist, and biochemist. He was President of the United States National Academy of Sciences for two terms from 1969 to 1981. He was also a recipient of the National Medal of Science.

Jeremy M. Berg American academic

Jeremy Mark Berg was founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Personalized Medicine. He holds positions as Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science Strategy and Planning and Professor of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2016, Berg was named editor in chief of the Science journals.

Irwin Fridovich American biochemist

Irwin Fridovich was an American biochemist who, together with his graduate student Joe M. McCord, discovered the enzymatic activity of copper,zinc superoxide dismutase (SOD),—to protect organisms from the toxic effects of superoxide free radicals formed as a byproduct of normal oxygen metabolism. Subsequently, Fridovich's research group also discovered the manganese-containing and the iron-containing SODs from E coli and the mitochondrial MnSOD (SOD2), now known to be an essential mammalian protein. He spent the rest of his career studying the biochemical mechanisms of SOD and of biological superoxide toxicity, using bacteria as model systems. Fridovich was also Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at Duke University.

Richard D. Cummings is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. He moved to Harvard on September 1, 2015. He is also the Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Glycoscience, officially approved in June, 2016. Within the Department of Surgery he is also the Vice-Chair of Basic and Translational Research, Chair of the Research Council, and Associate Director for Drug Discovery and Translational Research.

Franz-Ulrich Hartl is a German biochemist and Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. He is known for his pioneering work in the field of protein-mediated protein folding and is a recipient of the 2011 Lasker Award along with Arthur L. Horwich.

Christian Rudolf Hubert Raetz was the George Barth Geller Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. His laboratory's research focused on lipid biochemistry and has contributed significantly to the understanding of Lipid A biosynthesis.

Peter Cresswell FRS is a British immunologist, and Eugene Higgins Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Cell Biology and of Dermatology, at Yale School of Medicine. His lab primary focuses on the molecular mechanisms of antigen processing particularly the functions of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules and CD1 molecules. He is most notable for discovering and identifying the MHC class II molecules and viperin.

Daniel Herschlag is an American biochemist and Professor of Biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His research uses an interdisciplinary approach to advance our understanding of the fundamental behavior of RNA and proteins. He is well known for his application of rigorous kinetic and mechanistic approaches to RNA and protein systems.

Jeffrey David Esko, Ph.D.,M.D. (h.c) is currently a Full Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Co-Director of the Glycobiology Research and Training Center at the University of California, San Diego. His research has focuses on understanding the structure, biosynthesis and biological roles of proteoglycans in mammalian cells and model organisms. Esko popularized proteoglycans through his pioneering genetic and functional studies in cells and model organisms. He discovered the dependence of tumor formation on heparan sulfate, the first small molecule inhibitors of heparan sulfate, the action of proteoglycans as receptors for hepatic lipoprotein clearance and for delivery of therapeutic agents. Esko cofounded Zacharon Pharmaceuticals. He was an editor and author of the first textbook in the Glycobiology field, Essentials of Glycobiology.

Minor Jesser Coon was an American biochemist and Victor V Vaughan Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is best known for his research on cytochrome P-450 and as the co-discoverer of HMG-CoA, along with Bimal Kumar Bachhawat. He died on September 5, 2018 from complications due to Alzheimer's disease.

Susan Taylor is an American biochemist who is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. She is known for her research on protein kinases, particularly protein kinase A. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1996.

Phillips Wesley Robbins is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the Boston University School of Dental Medicine. He moved to BU in 1998 following a career of almost 40 years on the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Marvin H. Caruthers is an American biochemist who is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Brenda L. Bass is a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Utah who holds the H.A. and Edna Benning Endowed Chair. She is also an adjunct professor of human genetics and an investigator at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Her research focuses on RNA silencing and the cellular dynamics of double-stranded RNA. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015.

Malcolm Daniel Lane was a biochemist who spent most of his career on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Lane served as the head of the Department of Biological Chemistry from 1978 to 1997, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1987, and was named a University Distinguished Service Professor – the institution's highest academic title – in 2001. Lane's research focused on the biochemistry of lipids and lipid metabolism, and the resulting physiological mechanisms regulating adipogenesis and obesity.

Stuart Arthur Kornfeld is a professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis and researcher in glycobiology.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Paulson, J. C. (4 June 2013). "Robert L. Hill, 1928-2012". Glycobiology. 23 (7): 762–763. doi: 10.1093/glycob/cwt035 .
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 JBC Associate Editors (October 2012). "Robert L. Hill retires as JBC associate editor after nearly five decades of service". ASBMB Today. Retrieved 12 March 2017.
  3. "Overview: The Department of Biochemistry, Past and Present". Duke University School of Medicine. Retrieved 12 March 2017.