Otto Folin

Otto Folin
Otto Folin in biochemistry lab at McLean Hospital, 1905; photo by A.H. Folsom (Harvard)
Born	(1867-04-04)April 4, 1867 Åseda, Småland, Sweden
Died	October 23, 1934(1934-10-23) (aged 67)
Education	University of Minnesota, Uppsala University, University of Chicago (PhD)
Known for	Folin-Ciocalteu reagent for detecting polyphenols
Scientific career
Fields	Biochemist
Institutions	Uppsala University, Pathological Institute of Charité; West Virginia University; McLean Hospital, Boston; Harvard Medical School
Doctoral advisor	Julius Stieglitz
Doctoral students	Edward Adelbert Doisy George H. Hitchings James Batcheller Sumner

Otto Knut Olof Folin (April 4, 1867 – October 25, 1934) was a Swedish-born American chemist who is best known for his groundbreaking work at Harvard University on practical micromethods for the determination of the constituents of protein-free blood filtrates and the discovery of creatine phosphate in muscles.

Background

Folin was born in Åseda, Småland in Sweden. He was the seventh of twelve children of Nils Magnus Folin and Eva Olson. He moved to America at the age of fifteen following two brothers and an aunt who had already settled there. He carried on his schooling in Stillwater, Minnesota. He moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota entering the University of Minnesota and completed his B.S in 1892.

Career

In 1896, Folin returned to Sweden and began his research in the laboratory of Prof. Olof Hammarsten (1841-1932) at Uppsala University. In 1897, he left to work in the laboratory of the chemist, Ernst Leopold Salkowski at the Pathological Institute of Charité (Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin) in Berlin, Germany. In 1890, he became a citizen of the United States. He joined the University of Chicago gaining his Ph.D. in 1898.

In 1899 he was appointed assistant professor at West Virginia University. He moved to the McLean Hospital Boston in 1900 as a research biochemist, eventually moving to Harvard Medical School in 1907 as an associate professor of biological chemistry, becoming the Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in 1909. Together with Vintilă Ciocâlteu Otto Folin designed the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent to detect polyphenols. In 1920, he co-developed with Hsien Wu the Folin-Wu method of assaying glucose in protein-free filtrates of blood.

Folin was elected the president of the American Society of Biological Chemists (now the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) in 1909. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Carl Wilhelm Scheele Medal of the Swedish Chemical Society in 1930.

Selected works

• Approximately complete analyses of thirty "normal" urines (1905)
• Chemical problems in hospital practice (1908)
• Nitrogen retention in the blood in experimental acute nephritis in the cat (1912)
• Preservatives and other chemicals in foods: Their use and abuse (1914)
• On the determination of creatinine and creatine in urine (1914)
• Recent biochemical investigations on blood and urine;: Their bearing on clinical and experimental medicine (1917)
• A System of Blood Analysis by Folin and Wu (1919)
• Laboratory Manual of Biological Chemistry with Supplement (1925)

See also

• Folin's phenol reagent

Sources

• Schaffer, Phillip Otto Folin: (1867–1934) (Journal of Nutrition. volume 52, issue 1, pages 3–11. 1954) [1]
• Edsall, John T. A Biomedical Pioneer (Science, volume 244 (4905), pages 719–720. 1989, doi 10.1126/science.244.4905.719)

Related reading

• Meites, Samuel (1989) Otto Folin, America's First Clinical Biochemist (American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc., Washington, D.C.) ISBN 978-0915274482

External links

• Otto Folin in biochemistry lab at McLean Hospital Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine