Frederick Gowland Hopkins

Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins OM PRS (20 June 1861 – 16 May 1947) was an English biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929, with Christiaan Eijkman, for the discovery of vitamins. He also discovered the amino acid tryptophan, in 1901. He was President of the Royal Society from 1930 to 1935.

Biography

Hopkins was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, and educated at the City of London School completing his further study with the University of London External Programme and the medical school at Guy's Hospital which is now part of King's College London School of Medicine. He then taught physiology and toxicology at Guy's Hospital from 1894 to 1898.

In 1898 he married Jessie Anne Stephens (1861-1937); they had two daughters, one of whom, Jacquetta Hawkes, was married to J.B. Priestley, the author.

Also in 1898, while attending a meeting of the Physiological Society, he was invited by Sir Michael Foster to join the Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge to investigate the chemical aspects of physiology. Biochemistry was not, at that time, recognized as a separate branch of science. In June 1902 he was given a readership in biochemistry, and in 1910 he became a Fellow of Trinity College, and an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College. In 1914 he was elected to the Chair of Biochemistry at Cambridge University, thus becoming the first Professor in that discipline at Cambridge. His Cambridge students included neurochemistry pioneer Judah Hirsch Quastel and pioneer embryologist Joseph Needham.