Edward C. Kendall is best remembered as a pioneer in the discovery and isolation of several important hormones. As a young scientist he isolated the hormone thyroxine from the thyroid glands of cattle; today, thyroxine is produced synthetically and used in the treatment of thyroid disorders. Later, he isolated six hormones produced by the adrenal cortex. One of these was cortisone, which proved to be a breakthrough in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Kendall's work led to the 1950 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology, which he shared with colleagues Philip S. Hench and Tadeus Reichstein.
Edward Calvin Kendall was born on March 8, 1886, in South Norwalk, Connecticut, the youngest of three children. His father, George Stanley Kendall, was a dentist, and his mother, Eva Frances (Abbott), was active with the Congregational Church. Kendall showed a curious nature early on, and when he entered Columbia University in 1904 he chose chemistry as his primary area of study. He earned his bachelor of science degree in 1908, his master's degree in 1909, and his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1910--all from Columbia.
Upon his graduation, he accepted a position with the pharmaceutical firm Parke, Davis, and Company in Detroit. He found the atmosphere stifling, however, because he had no opportunities for the kind of research he wanted to do. In his memoirs, Cortisone: Memoirs of a Hormone Hunter, he expressed his disdain for the rigid, controlled environment at Parke, Davis. As an example, he noted the company policy that all lab employees punch in and out on a time clock. "After working 18 hours a day for some weeks to finish my thesis," he recalled in his biography, "I could not accept the thought that my value to the company could be determined by the hours spent in the building."
After four months at Parke, Davis, Kendall left and returned to New York. He soon found a position at St. Luke's Hospital. It was at St. Luke's where Kendall began his work on isolating thyroxine. Nearly twenty years earlier, the German chemist Eugen Baumann had discovered high concentrations of iodine in the thyroid gland. Scientists were later able to obtain a protein called thyroglobulin; Kendall's aim was to isolate the active compound in this protein.
He was able to purify the protein, and early experiments with patients at St. Luke's proved successful. But while the physicians at St. Luke's were eager to find new ways to treat patients, their emphasis on actual research was not as strong as Kendall thought it should be. He left St. Luke's at the end of 1913 and headed west to the Mayo Clinic, where over the next four decades he did his most important work.
By the end of 1914, Kendall had isolated thyroxine. This breakthrough discovery eventually led to synthetic production of the substance, which in turn led to more effective treatment of thyroid disorders. For his work he was awarded the Chandler Prize by his alma mater in 1925. Kendall also isolated the peptide glutathione from yeast and determined its structure.
Now Kendall was ready to tackle the challenge of isolating hormones from the adrenal gland. During the 1930s he managed to isolate more than two dozen hormones, or corticoids (so called because they came from the cortex, or outer section, of the gland). The six most important hormones were each assigned a letter A through F. Compound E--cortisone--turned out to be the most significant of these.
Compound E was not easy to synthesize. Kendall worked for several years with a substance obtained from cattle bile and was finally successful in producing a small amount of the compound late in 1946. Kendall's research got a boost from the U.S. Government, which gave top medical priority to the investigation of cortisone during the Second World War. This was prompted in part by rumors (later proven untrue) that German scientists had been extracting adrenal gland extract from Argentine cattle and giving it to Nazi pilots to boost their strength (they were supposed to be able to fly planes at heights up to 40,000 feet). The U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (with which Kendall served as a civilian during the war) gave him support, and the pharmaceutical firm Merck and Company sent a scientist to help him complete the synthesis.
Research by Kendall's colleague Hench showed that cortisone might be useful in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis . Actual experimentation with patients began in 1948, and the results were dramatic. Rheumatoid arthritis is a painful condition that causes severe pain and swelling in the joints; cortisone, though not a cure, was able to control the symptoms. It also controlled symptoms in some skin diseases and eye disorders. Reichstein, working independently of Kendall and Hench, also synthesized cortisone in Switzerland. It was for their work and research with cortisone that the three men were awarded the Nobel Prize. Kendall was also awarded several honorary degrees, including one from Columbia.
In 1951, Kendall accepted a position as visiting professor at Princeton University, where he remained for the rest of his life. Among his other awards were the American Public Health Association's Lasker Award and the American Medical Association's Scientific Achievement Award. He was a member of several organizations, and in addition to his book Thyroxine and his memoirs, he wrote articles for numerous scientific publications. He served as president of the American Society of Biological Chemists from 1925 to 1926 and the Endocrine Society from 1930 to 1931.
Kendall married Rebecca Kennedy in 1915 and had three sons and a daughter. All three of Kendall's sons died before their father passed away. Kendall himself died in Rahway, New Jersey, on May 4, 1972 and was buried in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic.
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