Thomas C. Bruice (August 25, 1925 – February 15, 2019)[1] was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at University of California, Santa Barbara. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974. He was a pioneering researcher in the area of chemical biology, and is one of the 50 most cited chemists.[2][3]
Thomas C. Bruice | |
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Born | August 25, 1925 |
Died | February 15, 2019 | (aged 93)
Nationality | American |
Education | University of Southern California (B.S., Ph.D.) |
Known for | Use of imidazole-catalysed hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate as a model system |
Awards | NAS Award in Chemical Sciences |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Bioorganic chemistry, enzyme catalysis |
Institutions | University of California, Los Angeles, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, University of California, Santa Barbara |
Bruice earned his B.S. at the University of Southern California, and returned there after his service as a Marine medical corpsman during the World War II island campaigns in the South Pacific, and obtained his Ph.D. there.[1] He carried out post-doctoral work at University of California, Los Angeles. He has been a faculty member at Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and Cornell University.[2] He joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1964.
Bruice published more than 600 papers during his career. He saw himself as a bioorganic chemist rather than as a biochemist, and that description is very apt for his work, as most of the molecules that he studied were natural products such as thyroxine.[4] In addition, he made important contributions to understanding enzyme catalysis, and he pioneered the use of imidazole-catalysed hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate as a model system.[5] (This system has the practical advantage that it is very convenient to follow the hydrolysis spectrophotometically.) He also stied[check spelling] a similar reaction catalysed by the enzyme ribonuclease.[6] More generally, he made a study of mechanisms for chymotrypsin catalysis.,[7] and in particular the "charge-relay" system as a way of understanding the role of the catalytic triad that exists in such enzymes.[8] He considered that "orbital steering" was a new name for a well established observation.[9][10]
Bruice wrote reviews on a number of topics, including the use of small molecules to understand catalysis [11] and the chemistry of flavins,[12][13] and on enzyme catalysis in general.[14]
Bruice collaborated with Stephen Benkovic to write a two-volume work on Bioorganic Mechanisms that helped establish this field.[15]