Boyer, Paul Delos (1918-2018), an American biochemist, did pioneering work on the process of energy production in living cells. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize for chemistry with John Ernest Walker of the United Kingdom and Jens Christian Skou of Denmark. Boyer worked with Walker to discover the mechanism involved in the production of the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is essential to life and is involved in the chemical conversion of nutrients into energy that can be used by cells. See Cell (Producing energy) ; Respiration (Cellular respiration) .
Since the discovery of ATP in 1929, scientists have worked to explain its role in energy production and how it is formed in the cell. The basic functions of organisms, such as the beating of the heart, muscle contractions, and the transmission of nerve impulses, depend on ATP. Boyer started his research with the study of enzymes, substances that speed up chemical reactions in all living things. In the 1950’s, he began to investigate the mechanisms involved in the formation of ATP. His Nobel Prize-winning work involved the study of the enzyme ATP synthase, which promotes the production of ATP. He succeeded in determining the molecular structure of ATP synthase and showed in detail how it uses energy to create new ATP. Boyer’s work is a major contribution to the understanding of the chemistry of basic life processes.
Boyer was born in Provo, Utah, on July 31, 1918. He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1943. From 1947 to 1963, he was associate professor and then professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin. In 1963, he became professor of chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1965, he founded the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA and was its director from 1965 to 1983. Boyer died on June 2, 2018.
