Gerardus Johannes Mulder

Gerardus Johannes Mulder.

Gerardus Johannes Mulder (27 December 1802 – 18 April 1880) was a Dutch organic and analytical chemist

Biography

Mulder was born in Utrecht, and earned a medical degree from Utrecht University.

He became a professor of chemistry at Rotterdam and later at Utrecht. While at the Utrecht University, Mulder described the chemical composition of protein. He claimed that albuminous substances are made up of a common radical, protein, and that protein had the same empirical formula except for some variation in amounts of sulfur and phosphorus, long before the polymer nature of proteins was recognized after work by Staudinger and Carrothers.

He was the first to use this name, protein, coined by Jöns Jacob Berzelius in a publication, his 1838 paper 'On the composition of some animal substances'. In the same publication he also proposed that animals draw most of their protein from plants.

Augustus Voelcker was Mulder’s assistant for a year from 1846.

In 1850, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He died in Bennekom in 1880.

Bibliography

• Ihde, Aaron (1964) The Development of Modern Chemistry, Harper and Row, pages 359 and 423-424.

External links

• On the composition of some animal substances Translation of parts of Mulder's article from: Mikulás Teich, A Documentary History of Biochemistry, 1770-1940 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992)
  "Ueber die Zusammensetzung einiger thierischen Substanzen". Journal für Praktische Chemie (in German). 16: 129–152. 1839. doi:10.1002/prac.18390160137. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |trans_title=, |laydate=, |laysummary=, and |laysource= (help)