Stein, William Howard, 1911–80, American biochemist, b. New York City, Ph.D. Columbia, 1937. Stein was a professor at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller Univ.) from 1937 until he retired in 1971. He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Christian Anfinsen and Stanford Moore for their work on ribonuclease. Building on Anfinsen's work, which elucidated the way in which ribonuclease is formed in living cells, Moore and Stein articulated critical principles concerning the relationship between the molecular structure and the biological activity of the enzyme, which breaks down ribonucleic acid and translates it into proteins that the body can use.
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