Stanley's father, James G. Stanley, is a local newspaper publisher. Stanley studied at Earlham College in Indiana. During his college years, he liked chemistry and mathematics very much, and he also loved football. His original dream was to be a football coach.
On the eve of graduation, Stanley visited the famous chemist Professor roger adams, who is the head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois. During the conversation, the professor's enthusiasm and persistence infected Stanley, and he decided to give up his career dream of being a football coach and devote himself to chemical research. After graduation, he studied chemistry with Professor roger adams, and successively obtained the Master of Science degree (1927) and the Doctor of Chemistry degree (65438). During this period, his main research direction was chemical pharmacy. After working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois for one year, Stanley went to Germany as a visiting scholar as a researcher of the National Research Council. Germany was the center of world chemical and pharmaceutical research at that time. At the University of Munich, Stanley did short-term academic research with Heinrich Vilander, winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 193 1 year, Stanley returned to the United States during the Great Depression, but he managed to find a job as a research assistant at the Rockefeller Institute in new york.
1932, Stanley began to study tobacco mosaic. At that time, TMV, the pathogen of TMV, was so infectious and destructive that it could not be observed under ordinary microscope. Tobacco mosaic virus causes great losses to tobacco farmers every year. Although international scholars have studied TMV, there are many conjectures about its nature and structure, and there is no convincing evidence.
1935, Stanley, who is studying in the Laboratory of Animal and Plant Pathology of Princeton University, found that the infectivity of TMV was destroyed by pepsin. Inspired by this phenomenon, he began to suspect that the virus was composed of protein. Stanley decided to isolate and purify tobacco mosaic virus.
Stanley found more than one ton of tobacco leaves infected with mosaic, and ground and filtered them piece by piece. He wanted to purify the virus by extracting enzymes, but the extremely low extraction rate made his work as hard as Madame Curie's extraction of radium from asphalt. After a mechanical and boring time, he finally got a spoonful of things that looked like needle-like crystals under the microscope. When the crystal is put into a small amount of water, the water turns milky white. After rubbing this solution on healthy tobacco leaves with your fingers several times, this tobacco also got the same type of mosaic disease a week later. He announced the infectious tobacco mosaic virus. Today, there is still a bottle marked "Tob" in the original Stanley laboratory of the University of California. Mos ",which contains tobacco mosaic virus purified by Stanley for the first time.
Then Stanley began to study the purified virus. According to various test results, it is confirmed that this crystalline substance is protein. Preliminary osmotic pressure and diffusion tests show that the molecular weight of this protein is as high as several million. The infectivity of its crystalline products depends on the integrity of protein, and infectivity is considered as a property of virus protein. Stanley's research paper was published in famous magazines such as Science, in which he wrote: "Tobacco mosaic virus is a kind of protein with autocatalytic ability, and its proliferation needs the existence of living cells". Stanley's famous work in this period was later hailed as one of the classics of basic virology. It was also during this period that he won the 1946 Nobel Prize in chemistry with sumner and Northrop.
But Stanley did not pay attention to the phosphorus and sugar components of tobacco mosaic virus in his research work. 1936, British Bawden and Pirie found phosphorus and sugar components in the purified tobacco mosaic virus, which exist in the form of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and can be released from virus particles through thermal changes. The news came that Stanley's initial reaction was to oppose this conclusion, so he did not hesitate to debate with dissidents at many academic conferences, but science is based on experiments. Stanley found himself wrong after repeating the experiment of the British team, and he had to keep silent about it. As the truth gradually became clear, scientists finally reached a consensus that tobacco mosaic virus is composed of protein and RNA. In 1939, G.A.Kansche directly observed tobacco mosaic virus under electron microscope, and pointed out that tobacco mosaic virus is a long rod-shaped particle with a diameter of 1.5nm and a length of 300nm. Later research proved that tobacco mosaic virus particles are nucleic acid inside and protein outside. The mystery of the chemical structure of tobacco mosaic virus was finally solved by scientists.
After Stanley succeeded in studying tobacco mosaic virus, more and more scholars devoted themselves to the field of virology, and tobacco mosaic virus has also become an essential research object for many virus researchers. Facing the rapid development of virology, Stanley thinks it is necessary to establish a special virology laboratory. A few months before winning the Nobel Prize, Stanley happened to meet Robert G.Sproul, president of the University of California, on the plane. During the conversation, Stanley put forward the idea of establishing a special virus laboratory in order to conduct a comprehensive study of virology. 1948, Prall invited Stanley to set up a virus laboratory in Berkeley campus and served as the laboratory director, and Stanley's wish came true. In the Berkeley virus lab, Stanley kept working until he retired. He also served as the head of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of California, trained a generation of virologists, and directed the completion of many research projects, which made outstanding contributions to further clarifying the nature of viruses and developed many new vaccines, among which polio vaccine was one. With the rapid development of virology, more and more chemical structures of plant viruses and animal viruses have been explained by human beings. On this basis, great progress has been made in the prevention and treatment of animal and plant pathology. Many viral diseases that endanger human beings are no longer incurable diseases, and human health and life support capabilities have been strengthened. The New York Times said of Stanley: an amiable and bright-eyed national doctor.
Stanley's academic contributions are mainly in the research of chemical pharmacy, biphenyl stereochemistry and steroid compounds. He published more than 50 papers/kloc-0 in academic journals all his life, and is recognized as an authority on virus research all over the world. He is the author of Chemistry: Beautiful Things, which was nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.
Many people compare Stanley's achievements with Pasteur, who discovered bacteria. Throughout Stanley's life, in addition to winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1946, he also won many honors and awards: 1937 won the Scientific Progress Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1938 won the Rosenberg Medal (University of Chicago), the Alder Prize (Harvard University) and the Scott Prize (Philadelphia); 194 1 year won the gold medal of new york college; 1943 won the Copernican prize; 1946 won the Nichols medal (American Chemical Society); 1947 won the Gibbs medal (American Chemical Society); 1948 won the Franklin medal and the presidential medal; 1958 won the modern medicine award; 1963 was awarded the Cancer Control Celebrity Medal by the American Cancer Society. In addition, he has received honorary doctorates and scientific degrees from many universities and colleges, including Auricula College, Harvard University and Yale University (1938). Princeton University (1947) and University of Illinois (1959); Honorary doctor of law from University of California (1946) and Indiana University (195 1), honorary doctor from American Jewish Seminary (1953) and Mills College (1960), and honorary doctor from Paris University (/kloc-0).
He has also been invited as a consultant to many academic groups and medical organizations, and as a scientific consultant to the US government and the World Health Organization. He is a senior director of the American Cancer Society and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute. He is also a member of many scientific societies. Knowledge point Stanley's controversy
After Stanley 1946 won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Burton and Piri thought it was a mistake in the history of the Nobel Prize, and they were indignant, because Stanley initially thought that tobacco mosaic virus was composed of protein, and they corrected Stanley's mistake (check the papers published by Stanley 1935 to 1945, and you will think Burton and Piri were indignant. But today, looking at Stanley's life devoted to science and his great achievements in virology, many scholars think that he is worthy of the Nobel Prize. Today's virologists still recognize Stanley as the first scientist to clarify the nature of tobacco mosaic virus.