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Information about Maurice Loyal Huggins

Maurice Loyal Huggins (19 September 1897- 17 December 1981) was a scientist who independently conceived the idea of hydrogen bonding and who was an early advocate for their role in stabilizing protein secondary structure. An important polymer 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 hydrogen bond, 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 The first extant publication of the H-bond was that of Wendell Latimer and Worth Rodebush in 1920, who cite Huggins' unpublished work in a footnote.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 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 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 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, Robert Corey and Herman Branson.

Flory-Huggins theory

Main article: Flory-Huggins solution 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 22 September 1894) and Mary Abigail Huggins (born 2 October 1904).

Huggins earned his Ph.D. in 1922 under Charles M. Porter in the Chemistry Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley.

See also

References

  • 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.
hydrogen bond is a special type of dipole-dipole bond that exists between an electronegative atom and a hydrogen atom bonded to another electronegative atom. This type of bond always involves a hydrogen atom, thus the name.
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Proteins are large organic compounds made of amino acids arranged in a linear chain and joined together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of adjacent amino acid residues.
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secondary structure is the general three-dimensional form of local segments of biopolymers such as proteins and nucleic acids (DNA/RNA). It does not, however, describe specific atomic positions in three-dimensional space, which are considered to be tertiary structure.
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polymer is a substance composed of molecules with large molecular mass composed of repeating structural units, or monomers, connected by covalent chemical bonds. The word is derived from the Greek, πολυ, polu, "many"; and μέρος, meros,
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Flory-Huggins solution theory is a mathematical model of the thermodynamics of polymer solutions which takes account of the great dissimilarity in molecular sizes in adapting the usual expression for the entropy of mixing.
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hydrogen bond is a special type of dipole-dipole bond that exists between an electronegative atom and a hydrogen atom bonded to another electronegative atom. This type of bond always involves a hydrogen atom, thus the name.
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Gilbert Newton Lewis (October 23, 1875 - March 23, 1946) was a famous American physical chemist known for his 1902 Lewis dot structures, his 1916 paper "The Atom and the Molecule", which is the foundation of modern valence bond theory, developed in coordination with Irving
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Tautomers are organic compounds that are interconvertible by a chemical reaction called tautomerization. As most commonly encountered, this reaction results in the formal migration of a hydrogen atom or proton, accompanied by a switch of a single bond and adjacent
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Acetoacetic acid is the organic compound with the formula CH3C(O)CH2CO2H. It is the simplest beta-keto acid group and like other members of this class is unstable.
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William Thomas Astbury FRS (Bill Astbury, 25 February,1898 — 4 June,1961) was an English physicist and molecular biologist who made pioneering X-ray diffraction studies of biological molecules.
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resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency. This frequency is known as the system's resonance frequency. When damping is small, the resonance frequency is approximately equal to the natural frequency of the system, which
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A peptide bond is a chemical bond that is formed between two molecules when the carboxyl group of one molecule reacts with the amino group of the other molecule, releasing a molecule of water (H2O).
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Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling in 1954
Born January 28 1901(1901--)
Oswego, Oregon, U.S.
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Robert Corey (August 19, 1897 – April 23, 1971) is a little known scientist, mostly known for his helping Linus Pauling discover the α-helix and the β-sheet in the spring of 1951. Also working with Pauling was Herman Branson.
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Herman Russell Branson (August 14, 1914 - June 7, 1995) was an African American physicist, best known for his research on protein structure. He was also the president of two colleges.
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Flory-Huggins solution theory is a mathematical model of the thermodynamics of polymer solutions which takes account of the great dissimilarity in molecular sizes in adapting the usual expression for the entropy of mixing.
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hydrogen bond is a special type of dipole-dipole bond that exists between an electronegative atom and a hydrogen atom bonded to another electronegative atom. This type of bond always involves a hydrogen atom, thus the name.
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A peptide bond is a chemical bond that is formed between two molecules when the carboxyl group of one molecule reacts with the amino group of the other molecule, releasing a molecule of water (H2O).
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alpha helix (α-helix) is a right-handed coiled conformation, resembling a spring, in which every backbone N-H group donates a hydrogen bond to the backbone C=O group of the amino acid four residues earlier ( hydrogen bonding). (See also helix.
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