In memoriam: S. Harvey Mudd.

Abstract

S. Harvey Mudd died January 21, 2014, succumbing to pneumonia after heart surgery. On hearing of his death a colleague noted “We have lost a generation of Biochemistry in a single man”. Harvey was the acknowledged international authority on diseases of methionine metabolism. He wrote the chapters on methionine and sulfur metabolism in the last four editions of “Metabolic Basis of Inherited Disease”, a source of information used world-wide. Physicians all over the world suspecting a metabolic defect involving methionine in a patient would routinely consult him and send samples for analysis. His devotion to discovering the underlying reasons for the patient’s complications was legendary. Dr. Mudd was born in 1927 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He grew up in an academic family and signed his papers S. Harvey Mudd in order to distinguish himself from his father, Stuart Mudd, also a well-known scientist who served as Chairman of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania. His mother, Dr. Emily B. H. Mudd, founded the Marriage Council of Philadelphia and was a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, also at the University of Pennsylvania. After high school Harvey enlisted in the Navy in 1945. Soon after the Second World War ended he was discharged, having served less than a year. He attended Harvard University and graduated cum laude with an AB degree in 1949. A formative influence on his lifelong commitment to science was the following summer he spent as a student in the laboratory of Dr. George Wald. Wald was a spellbinding speaker and inspirational teacher who subsequently received the Nobel Prize in 1967 for his work on the pigments of the eye and the role of vitamin A in vision. Following this, Harvey entered Harvard Medical School and managed to spend the summer of 1950 in the laboratory of another Nobel laureate, Fritz Lipmann. Lipmann was a brilliant and innovative thinker who conceived the concept of high-energy bonds in biochemistry and also discovered Coenzyme A. In 1953 Harvey received an M.D. degree from Harvard and then completed his internship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He then returned to Lipmann’s laboratory as a Research Fellow for two years where he studied the uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation. It was during this time he met and married Marion Heinrich in 1955. Because Harvey’s initial period in the Navy was less than one year, he was subject to the draft of M.D.s that was in place during the Korean War. At that time a limited number of newly graduated M.D.s were selected to serve in the Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health, a much sought after position. Harvey was selected to work in the laboratory of Dr. Giulio Cantoni in 1956 and remained at NIH for his entire career. Dr. Cantoni was the discoverer of S-adenosylmethionine (AdoMet), the principal doHow to Cite this Article: Blom HJ,Stabler S, Wagner C. 2015. In Memoriam: S. Harvey Mudd.