Stephen B. H. Kent (born December 12, 1945, in

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

) is a professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. While professor at the

Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institute has over 170 laboratories employing 2,100 scientists, tec ...

in the early 1990s he pioneered modern ligation methods for the total chemical synthesis of proteins. He was the inventor of

native chemical ligation Native Chemical Ligation (NCL) is an important extension of the chemical ligation concept for constructing a larger polypeptide chain by the covalent condensation of two or more unprotected peptides segments. Native chemical ligation is the most ...

together with his student Philip Dawson. His laboratory experimentally demonstrated the principle that chemical synthesis of a protein's polypeptide chain using mirror-image

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...

s after folding results in a mirror-image

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 ...

molecule which, if an

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

, will catalyze a chemical reaction with mirror-image stereospecificity. At the University of Chicago Kent and his junior colleagues pioneered the elucidation of protein structures by quasi-racemic & racemic crystallography.

Biography

Kent received his

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

Ph.D. from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1975, his M.Sc. from

Massey University Massey University () is a Public university, public research university in New Zealand that provides internal and distance education. The university has campuses in Auckland, Palmerston North, and Wellington. Data from Universities New Zealand ...

, Palmerston North, New Zealand in 1970, and his B.Sc. degree in 1968 from

Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington (), also known by its shorter names "VUW" or "Vic", is a public university, public research university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of New Zealand Parliament, Parliament, and w ...

, New Zealand. Following his post-doctoral work in the laboratory of

Robert Bruce Merrifield Robert Bruce Merrifield (July 15, 1921 – May 14, 2006) was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for the invention of solid phase peptide synthesis. Early life He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on 15 July 1921, ...

at the

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a Private university, private Medical research, biomedical Research university, research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and pro ...

, Dr. Kent continued research there as an assistant professor through 1981. He has also held faculty positions at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

Bond University Bond University is Australia's first private university, private not-for-profit university and is located in Robina, Queensland, Robina on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Since its opening on 15 May 1989, Bond University has primarily been a teachi ...

in Australia, and the

in California. Currently Kent is professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology and professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago. From 2003-2009 he served as director of the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. In addition to his academic achievements, in the 1990s he was the founder of two San Francisco Bay Area companies: Ciphergen Biosytems and Gryphon Sciences. Kent has received international recognition for his research achievements. In 1994 he received the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry from the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

, the inaugural Kaiser Award from the

Protein Society The Protein Society is an international, not-for-profit, scholarly society with the mission to provide forums for the advancement of research into protein structure, function, design and applications. History The Protein Society was founded in ...

in 2002, the du Vigneaud Award from the American Peptide Society (2004), the 2009 Merrifield award from the American Peptide Society, the Rudinger Medal from the European Peptide Society (2010), the Akabori Medal from the Japanese Peptide Society (2010), the Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic Chemistry (2011) from the

, the Leach Medal from the Lorne Protein Conference (2013), the Prelog Medal for stereochemistry from the ETH Zurich (2017), and the inaugural Ernesto Scoffone Award from the Italian Peptide Society (2018). Dr. Kent is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He was elected Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

in 2000, and Fellow of the

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the ...

in 2008. In May 2016 the ''

Journal of Peptide Science The ''Journal of Peptide Science'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal, published since 1995 by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the European Peptide Society. The current editor-in-chief is Paolo Rovero ( Universita di Firenze). Abstract ...

'', edited by Luis Moroder, published a

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

in celebration of his 70th birthday.

References

External links

Festschrift
21st-century American chemists 1945 births Living people {{US-chemist-stub

Biography

References

Further reading

External links