Stein, William Howard (1911-1980), an American biochemist, shared the 1972 Nobel Prize for chemistry with American scientists Christian B. Anfinsen and Stanford Moore, for their contribution to the chemistry of proteins (see Anfinsen, Christian Boehmer ; Moore, Stanford ). Stein and his collaborators were the first to discover the complete chemical structure of the enzyme ribonuclease. They also analyzed the structures of amino acids and peptides–both constituents of proteins. See Enzyme ; Protein.
Stein was born in New York City. In 1938, he obtained a doctorate from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons (part of Columbia University) in that city. He joined the staff of the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University), also in New York City, where, in 1954, he became a professor. From 1968 to 1971, he edited the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
