Dam, Henrik (1895-1976), was a Danish biochemist who discovered important links between nutrition and blood clotting. He shared the 1943 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with American scientist Edward A. Doisy. Dam received the prize for research into antihemorrhagic substances (substances that stop bleeding) and for the discovery of vitamin K.
Dam’s research demonstrated that a disease in newborn chicks, whose symptoms were bleeding and an increased blood clotting time, was caused by the lack of an antihemorrhagic vitamin. Other scientists thought the symptoms were due to a lack of vitamin C. These symptoms would develop in chicks kept for two or three weeks from eating sterol, a fatty substance found in plant and animal tissues. Eating green leaves and hog liver would protect the chicks, and Dam and others managed to isolate a fat-soluble vitamin present in the green leaves.
Dam called this vitamin vitamin K, short for Koagulations-Vitamin (coagulation-vitamin). Dam discovered vitamin K in the seeds of cabbage, tomatoes, and soybeans, as well as in certain animal organs, such as the liver. In 1939, Edward Doisy managed to isolate vitamin K. Dam went on to study the properties, biological functions, and methods of isolation of vitamin K.
Dam’s other work included investigations of the effects of vitamin E. He also studied nutrition, particularly in relation to the formation of gallstones, pebblelike masses that can form in the gallbladder and impede the flow of bile.
Carl Peter Henrik Dam was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Feb. 21, 1895. He studied chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Copenhagen, and received his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Copenhagen in 1934. He taught at the universities of Copenhagen and of Rochester, New York. In 1945, he became a member of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. He returned to the Polytechnic Institute in 1946. From 1956 to 1963, Dam was leader of the Biochemical Division of the Danish Fat Research Institute. He died on April 17, 1976
See also Doisy, Edward Adelbert .
