Personal perspective on the work of Edith J. Chu and Jui Hsin Wang, and their influence on my research of the heme‐O2 complex and heme d1

Abstract

AbstractIn the first half of the 20th century, the best‐known Chinese woman chemist was Professor Edith Ju‐Hwa Chu (朱汝華). In the 1960–1970s, the world's most prestigious Chinese‐born chemist was Jui Hsin Wang (王瑞駪), Eugene Higgins Professor at Yale and later, Einstein Professor at SUNY Buffalo. They both studied under Chao‐Lun Tseng—the founding editor of this journal—and both made important contributions to the field of porphyrin and heme. This review profiles these two chemists, their work, and the challenges they faced, with an emphasis on the circumstances leading to their best‐known accomplishments. The remainder of the article describes two advances—the discovery of reversible O2‐binding heme and the unusual structure of d1 heme—influenced by Chu's and Wang's pioneering work, which became milestones in the author's own research and in this field of study.