Henrik Dam: Discoverer of Vitamin K and Pioneer in Biochemistry
Henrik Dam (21 February 1895 – 17 April 1976) was a Danish biochemist and physiologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1943 for his discovery of vitamin K and its role in blood coagulation.
Life and Career
He was born on 21 February 1895, in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1920, he graduated from Copenhagen Polytechnic Institute with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. After graduating, he worked at the School of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine as an instructor. He started teaching biochemistry at the University of Copenhagen’s Physiological Laboratory in 1923.
In 1928, he became an assistant professor at Copenhagen University’s Institute of Biochemistry. In 1929, he was promoted to Associate Professor at the same university. In 1934, he got his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Copenhagen. He wrote his thesis about Sterinerne’s biology called “Nogle Undersgelser over Sterinerne’s Biology.”
In 1932–1933, he worked with Rudolph Schoen Heimer of Freiburg, Germany, and in 1935, he worked with P Karrer of Zurich to study sterine metabolism. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dam was studying the role of cholesterol in the blood, and he noticed that chickens fed a cholesterol-free diet developed bleeding disorders. He found that adding a small amount of cholesterol to their diet could prevent the bleeding, but he also discovered that there was a substance in the diet that was necessary for blood clotting.
He discovered vitamin K while studying sterine metabolism in chickens, and he published his findings in 1935. His work opened up a new area of research in nutrition, and it had important implications for the treatment of bleeding disorders such as hemophilia.
Dam’s discovery also helped to explain why some people who were on long-term antibiotic therapy were at risk of bleeding since some antibiotics can interfere with the synthesis of vitamin K in the gut. He died on 17 April 1976, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Award and Legacy
He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1943 for his discovery of vitamin K and its role in blood coagulation.
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