HORMONE HUNTER

Research Chemist.

Edward C. Kendall was born on 8 March 1886 in South Norwalk, Connecticut, the third of eight children. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University in 1910 and then worked for a year as a research chemist for Parke, Davis and Company in Detroit, where he took on the task of extracting the thyroid hormone from the thyroid gland. Hormones are natural secretions of the endocrine glands that serve as the chemical messengers of the body; they are potent substances that activate, coordinate, and regulate the phenomena of life. Although scientists had theorized that the thyroid gland must produce some substance that was directly delivered into the blood, no one had yet succeeded in isolating and chemically identifying the thyroid hormone.

Mayo Biochemist.

Unhappy with his experience in a commercial laboratory, Kendall accepted an offer to set up a new biochemical...