James Batcheller Sumner

James Batcheller Sumner
(1887-1955)

U.S. biochemist who was the first to crystallize an enzyme, an achievement that led to knowledge of the protein nature of enzymes and earned him, with John Howard Northrop and Wendell Meredith Stanley, the 1946 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
After crystallizing the enzyme urease in 1926, Sumner went to Stockholm to study with Hans von Euler-Chelpin and Theodor (The) Svedberg. He crystallized the enzyme catalase in 1937 and also contributed to the purification of several other enzymes. Professor at the Cornell University Medical School, Ithaca, N.Y. (1929-55), in 1947 he became director of the Cornell laboratory of enzyme chemistry, an institution that was established in recognition of his work.