EDWARD DOISY; WON NOBEL PRIZE FOR ISOLATING VITAMIN K; AT 92
Author: Associated Press
Date: Saturday, October 25, 1986
Page: 16
Section: OBITUARY
ST. LOUIS -- Edward Adelbert Doisy, a biochemist who in 1943 shared the
Nobel Prize in medicine for isolating vitamin K, died of heart disease
Thursday in University Hospital. He was 92.
He was working at St. Louis University in 1938 when he and Danish
researcher Henrick Dam isolated vitamin K, which stimulates the production of
prothrombin as a major element in blood clotting. The two received the Nobel
Prize five years later.
Born in Hume, Ill., Doisy received bachelor's and master's degrees from
the University of Illinois and joined the Washington University School of
Medicine's faculty in 1919 before moving to St. Louis University in 1924.
He isolated estrone, a sex hormone, in 1929 and later identified
estradiol, a more powerful female hormone. The two discoveries spurred
research in the field of endocrinology, opening it to research in organic
chemistry that led eventually to his work in isolating vitamin K.
With his wife, Margaret, he recently pledged $1 million for expansion and
renovation of the Pius XII Memorial Library on the St. Louis University
campus. The expansion is to be dedicated next week. Doisy Hall, a research
wing at the university's medical school had been established earlier.
In addition to his wife, he leaves three sons, Robert and Philip, both
physicians in St. Louis, and Edward Doisy Jr., also a former biochemistry
professor in the department that the senior Doisy had helped establish at the
St. Louis University School of Medicine.
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