William Jencks

Infobox Scientist


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name = William Jencks
birth_date = August 15, 1927
birth_place = Bar Harbor, Maine
death_date = January 3, 2007
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nationality = American
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field = Biochemistry
work_institution = National Academy of Sciences
Brandeis University
alma_mater = Harvard College
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Dr. William Jencks (b. August 15,1927, Bar Harbor, Maine; d. January 3, 2007) was an American biochemist. He was noted particularly for his work on enzymes, using concepts drawn from organic chemistry to understand their mechanisms.

Career

Jencks graduated from Harvard College in 1947 with a degree in English, and earned an M.D. from Harvard University in 1951. He interned at the Peter Bent Brigham hospital. Jencks did a first postdoc for two years with Fritz Lipmann at Harvard Medical School. Jencks was drafted into the Army Medical Corps and was assigned to the Army Medical Service Graduate School at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC. He worked with E. L. Durrum and served as the chair of the department of pharmacology. In 1956-1957, he did a second PHS postdoc with R. B. Woodward of the Harvard University Department of Chemistry. In 1957, he moved to the new graduate program in biochemistry at Brandeis University. He became professor emeritus in 1996.

Much of his career focused on reaction mechanisms used by enzyme catalysts. He was particularly well known for studies of the reaction of nucleophiles with carbon. He proposed that enzymes use ground state destabilization, termed the Circe effect, to increase the reactivity of their bound substrates. [Jencks, WP: "On the attribution and additivity of binding energies", "Proc Natl Acad Sci USA",78(7):4046] Many of these research interests were explored in his influential text, Catalysis in chemistry and enzymology.

Jencks was a co-founder of the biannual Winter Enzyme Mechanisms Conference. He was memorialized at the 20th Enzyme Mechanisms Meeting in St. Pete Beach, Florida, several days after his death.

Honors and awards

Jencks was a recipient of the 1962 American Chemical Society Award in Biological Chemistry, the 1993 American Society of Biological Chemists Award, the 1995 American Chemical Society James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, and the 1996 American Chemical Society Repligen Award for Chemistry of Biological Processes. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1971. Jencks was also a foreign member of the Royal Society and a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Personal life

Jencks's father Gardner Jencks was a pianist and composer. He completed high school near Baltimore, at St. Paul's School. After his first year at medical school, he did research with George Wald at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole on lobster shell pigments. At Woods Hole, he met his future wife, Miriam Ehrlich. Jencks was survived by his wife of 56 years Miriam, children Sara and David, grandson Benjamin, and siblings Charles Jencks, Penelope Jencks-Hurwitz, and John Cheetham.

Publications

*Citation | last=Jencks | first=William | year=1987 | title=Catalysis in chemistry and enzymology.

*Citation | id=PMID:9242900 | url=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9242900 | last=Jencks | first=William | year=1997 | title=From chemistry to biochemistry to catalysis to movement. | volume=66 | periodical=Annu Rev Biochem | pages=1-18 | doi=10.1146/annurev.biochem.66.1.1

References

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Persondata
NAME= Jencks, William Platt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH= August 15, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH= Bar Harbor, Maine
DATE OF DEATH= January 3, 2007
PLACE OF DEATH=