Stanford Moore

Biography

 Stanford Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated with a B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1935 and received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1938. He then joined Max Bergmann's laboratory in 1939, but his research was interrupted by WWII, during which he enlisted as a technical aid on the National Defense Research Council in Washington. After the war, Moore and William H. Stein started to work on amino acid analysis, and were eventually able to separate out individual amino acids from a synthetic mixture. This work was featured in a Journal of Biological Chemistry Classic (1). They used their methods to determine the compositions of β-lactoglobulin and bovine serum albumin. Eventually they created the first amino acid analyzer in 1958. This led to their structural analysis of ribonuclease. Their work was recognized in 1972 when Stein and Moore were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which they shared with Christian Anfinsen. Moore, along with Stein, continued to study structure/function relationships of a number of other proteins including pancreatic deoxyribonuclease, chymotrypsin, pepsin, streptococcal proteinase, ribonuclease T1, carboxypeptidase Y, and pancreatic ribonuclease.

Research Interest

 Moore was very involved in service to the biochemistry community and functioned as treasurer (1956–1959) and president (1966) of the American Society of Biological Chemists (1966) and as a member of the Journal of Biological Chemistry editorial board. Additionally, Moore was president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (1970) and chairman of the Organizing Committee for the International Congress of Biochemistry in 1964. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Harvey Society. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Moore was awarded the American Chemical Society Award in Chromatography and Electrophoresis (1964), the Richards Medal of the American Chemical Society (1972), and the Linderstrom-Lang Medal (1972).