Maurice Loyal Huggins (September 19, 1897, Berkeley County, West Virginia – December 17, 1981) was a scientist who independently conceived the idea of

hydrogen bond In chemistry, a hydrogen bond (H-bond) is a specific type of molecular interaction that exhibits partial covalent character and cannot be described as a purely electrostatic force. It occurs when a hydrogen (H) atom, Covalent bond, covalently b ...

ing and who was an early advocate for their role in stabilizing

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...

secondary structure Protein secondary structure is the local spatial conformation of the polypeptide backbone excluding the side chains. The two most common Protein structure#Secondary structure, secondary structural elements are alpha helix, alpha helices and beta ...

. An important

polymer A polymer () is a chemical substance, substance or material that consists of very large molecules, or macromolecules, that are constituted by many repeat unit, repeating subunits derived from one or more species of monomers. Due to their br ...

theory, Flory–Huggins theory, is also named after him.

Controversies over the hydrogen bond

Huggins believed that he had been the first to suggest the concept of the

, while he was a student under G. N. Lewis at the Chemical Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. According to his account, he wrote a thesis in 1919 in which the H-bond was introduced and applied to tautomerism in acetoacetic acid. Unfortunately, no hard copy of the thesis remains. The first extant publication of the H-bond was that of Wendell Latimer and Worth Rodebush in 1920, who cite Huggins' unpublished work in a footnote. (They were fellow scientists at the Chemical Laboratory.)

Structure of the peptide bond

In 1937, Huggins analyzed the β-sheet models of

William Astbury William Thomas Astbury FRS (25 February 1898 – 4 June 1961) was an English physicist and molecular biologist who made pioneering X-ray diffraction studies of biological molecules. His work on keratin provided the foundation for Linus Pauli ...

and realized that the hydrogen bonding could not work as described since the bond geometry of the amide nitrogen (then presumed to be tetrahedral) would deflect the hydrogen away from the carbonyl oxygen. He further suggested that

resonance Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration whose frequency matches a resonant frequency (or resonance frequency) of the system, defined as a frequency that generates a maximu ...

might play a role in changing the geometry of the peptide bond to make the hydrogen bonds more linear. However, he did not state explicitly that the

peptide bond In organic chemistry, a peptide bond is an amide type of covalent chemical bond linking two consecutive alpha-amino acids from C1 (carbon number one) of one alpha-amino acid and N2 (nitrogen number two) of another, along a peptide or protein cha ...

was planar, as emphasized by Pauling in a nearly simultaneous paper.

Structure of the α-helix

Huggins also produced a model of the α-helix in 1943, roughly eight years ahead of the modern model of

Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling ( ; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist and peace activist. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. ''New Scientist'' called him one of the 20 gre ...

Robert Corey Robert Brainard Corey (August 19, 1897 – April 23, 1971) was an American biochemist, mostly known for his role in discovery of the α-helix and the β-sheet with Linus Pauling. Also working with Pauling was Herman Branson. Their discoveries ...

and Herman Branson.

Flory–Huggins theory

Personal history

Huggins was born in 1897 to Amos Williamson Huggins and Mary Abigail Hackley. He had at least two sisters, Dorothea Harriet Huggins (born September 22, 1894) and Mary Abigail Huggins (born October 2, 1904). He earned his Ph.D. in 1922 under Charles Walter Porter (known as Walter Porter) in the Chemistry Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. In 1941 he was elected a Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

. He was employed as a chemist by Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories.

References

Sources

* Latimer WM and Rodebush WH. (1920) "Polarity and Ionization from the Standpoint of the Lewis Theory of Valence", ''J. Am. Chem. Soc.'', 42, 1419–1433. * Huggins ML. (1936) ''J. Org. Chem.'', 1, 407–456. * Pauling L and Niemann C. (1939) ''J. Am. Chem. Soc.'', 61, 1860–1867. * Huggins M. (1943) "The structure of fibrous proteins", ''Chem. Rev.'', 32, 195–218. * Huggins ML. (1971) ''Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.'', 10, 147–152. * Huggins ML. (1980) ''Chem. Tech.'', 10, 422. {{DEFAULTSORT:Huggins, Maurice Loyal 20th-century American biochemists University of California, Berkeley alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society People from Berkeley County, West Virginia 1897 births 1981 deaths Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Kodak people Place of death missing