John E. Hodge

John Edward Hodge (1914-1996) was an African-American chemist, born in Kansas City, Kansas.

He gained an A.B. degree in 1936 and a master's degree from the University of Kansas in 1940; from 1941 to 1980 he worked at the USDA Northern Regional Research Center in Peoria, Illinois. He also taught at Western University (Kansas), in 1972 held a visiting professorship at the University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in 1984–1985 was an adjunct professor at Bradley University.

An article of his: Hodge, J. E. (1953). "Chemistry of browning reactions in model systems." Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 1(15): 928-943 was named a "Citation Classic" by the Science Citation Index in 1979. In it he studied the chemistry of non-enzymatic browning reactions in dehydrated foods, such as the Maillard reaction. The article included a reaction scheme which is known as the "Hodge Scheme" and is considered to be the Maillard reaction pathway over 50 years later.

References

• Feather, Milton S. (1998), "John E. Hodge, 1914–1996", Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biochemistry, 53: 1a, 1–4, doi:10.1016/S0065-2318(08)60040-2.
• This Week's Citation Classic (PDF), March 19, 1979. A brief memoir by Hodge recounting his work on the 1953 dehydrated foods paper.
• Gordon, Jacob U. (2002), The Black male in white America, Nova Publishers, p. 86, ISBN 978-1-59033-370-9.
• Brown, Mitchell C., "John Edward Hodge: Chemist", The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences.
• "John Edward Hodge", Kansas City Star, January 7, 1996. As cited by Brown.

External links

• Biography as part of a student project on notable African Americans at the University of Pittsburgh.
• Listing in Future Education collection of African American scientists.