EncyclopediaPorter, Rodney Robert
Porter, Rodney Robert, 1917–85, British biochemist, Ph.D. Cambridge, 1948. He was a researcher at the National Institute of Medical Research, England (1949–1960), and a professor at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School–Univ. of London (1960–1967) before becoming a professor at Oxford in 1967. In 1972 Porter and Gerald M. Edelman received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies. Using different techniques and working independently, the two constructed a complete model of the giant antibody molecule, which consists of some 1,300 amino acids. The findings of Edelman and Porter provided the groundwork for much of the research that followed in immunology and led to further breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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