Brief Chronology

  • 1916 --Born Christian Boehmer Anfinsen, Jr. in Monessen, Pennsylvania (March 26)
  • 1937 --Received BS, Swarthmore College
  • 1939 --Received MS (organic chemistry), University of Pennsylvania
  • 1939-40 --American Scandinavian Foundation Fellow, Carlsberg Laboratory (Copenhagen)
  • 1941 --Married Florence Bernice Kenenger; marriage ends, 1978
  • 1943 --Received PhD (biochemistry), Harvard Medical School
  • 1943-50 --Assistant professor, Department of Biological Chemistry, Harvard Medical School
  • 1944-46 --Civilian research position at Harvard for the Office of Scientific Research and Development
  • 1947-48 --Senior Fellow, sponsored by the American Cancer Society, at the Medical Nobel Institute (Stockholm)
  • 1950-52 --Chief, Laboratory of Cellular Physiology, National Heart Institute (NHI), National Institutes of Health (NIH)
  • 1952-62 --Chief, Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Metabolism, NHI
  • 1954 --Rockefeller Fellow, Carlsberg Laboratory (Copenhagen)
  • 1954-62 --Developed "thermodynamic principle" to describe protein folding in enzymes
  • 1958-59 --Guggenheim Fellow, Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel)
  • 1959 --The Molecular Basis of Evolution published
  • 1962-63 --Visiting Professor, Harvard Medical School, Department of Biological Chemistry
  • 1963-81 --Chief, Laboratory of Chemical Biology, National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (NIAMD, then NIAMDD, later NIDDK)
  • 1966-68 --Used affinity chromatography techniques to identify amino acid sequence in enzymes
  • 1972 --Shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanford Moore and William H. Stein
  • 1973 --Began work on interferon
  • 1979 --Married Libby Esther Shulman Ely
  • 1981 --Retired from NIH
  • 1981-82 --Visiting Professor of Biochemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science
  • 1982-95 --Professor, Department of Biology, The Johns Hopkins University
  • 1983 --Work on "hyperthermophilic bacteria" commenced
  • 1995 --Died of heart attack in Randallstown, Maryland (May 14)
  • 1996 --International Conference on Protein Folding and Design, honoring Anfinsen (April 23-26)