Background
Otto Folin was born on April 4, 1867, in Asheda, Sweden. He was the son of Nils Magnus Folin, a tanner, and Eva Olson Folin, the village midwife.
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
Otto received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Minnesota in 1892.
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Otto spent two years in Europe before returning to take his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1898.
United States
Otto Folin at his working place
Otto Folin was born on April 4, 1867, in Asheda, Sweden. He was the son of Nils Magnus Folin, a tanner, and Eva Olson Folin, the village midwife.
Otto received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Minnesota in 1892. He then studied with Stieglitz at the University of Chicago, completing a thesis on urethanes in 1896. Since he wished to study biochemistry, he spent two years in Europe, working with Albrecht Kossel at Marburg, Olof Hammarsten at Uppsala, and E. L. Salkowski in Berlin before returning to take his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1898.
Otto was appointed assistant professor of analytical chemistry at the University of West Virginia in 1899. In 1900 Folin took charge of the first laboratory for biochemical research to be established in a hospital, the McLean Hospital for the Insane at Waverley, Massachusetts. In 1907 he was appointed to the first chair of biochemistry in the Harvard Medical School, and there he remained for the rest of his life.
When he began work at the McLean Hospital, Folin decided to seek a method for detecting differences in metabolism between psychotic and normal individuals. He realized that urinary constituents reflect the metabolic state of the body and therefore began to study quantitative methods of urinalysis. He devoted particular attention to nitrogenous compounds and worked out colorimetric methods for their determination. Although his original hopes of obtaining results of psychiatric value were not realized, he grew more and more interested in developing analytical methods for biochemical research, and this field became his specialty. He soon recognized that analysis of blood constituents offered a better guide to metabolic reactions than did urinalysis, and most of his later work concerned blood analysis. He summed up much of this work in his classic paper on microchemical methods of blood analysis, which he published with Hsien Wu in 1919. His work with nitrogenous compounds led him to the concept of endogenous and exogenous metabolism which, although later greatly modified, was very fruitful at the time of its proposal. He established the fact that amino acids are absorbed from the intestine in free from rather than as proteins. His colorimetric methods made possible much of later biochemical analysis.
Folin was also active in aiding the publication of papers on biochemical research. Most of his work appeared in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, of which he was a leading supporter.
Folin was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Swedish Chemical Society.
Otto Folin married Laura Churchill Grant on September 11, 1899. They had three children: Joanna, Grant, and Teresa.