Edward Adalbert Doisy

Edward Adalbert Doisy in 1944 shared the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Henrik Dam. Dam received the prize “for his discovery of vitamin K”, Doisy “for his discovery of the chemical nature of vitamin K”.

Doisy earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1920. He taught at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri from 1919 to 1923, and St. Louis University 1923-1965. He was emeritus from 1965 until his death in 1986. Over the years he worked with the embryologist Edgar Allen developing assay techniques that facilitated research on sex hormones. In recognition of his contributions to the knowledge of vitamins, antibiotics, hormones, and blood buffer systems, St. Louis University's department of biochemistry was named for him in 1955.

Besides his discovery of the ant hemorrhagic vitamin K, Doisy is particularly known for his investigations of the vitamins K1 and K2 which he produced in crystalline form; the sex hormone estrone (theelin, 1929), the first oestrogen to be crystallized; estriol (theelol, 1930), and estradiol (dihydrotheelin, 1935).