Background
She was raised in Manhattan, where her father was the superintendent of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
She was raised in Manhattan, where her father was the superintendent of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
After high school and several months as a laboratory assistant at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons (where Fruton was earning his Doctor of Philosophy), Simmonds attended Barnard College where she earned a Bachelor in chemistry in 1938.
Following training with Vincent du Vigneaud at Cornell University, she spent most of her career at University. Sofia, who went by the childhood nickname "Topsy" throughout her life, was the second child of Lionel Julius Simmonds and Clara Gottfried Simmonds. After that, she started graduate work in the lab of Hans Thacher Clarke (who had been "s advisor), but soon transferred to Cornell Medical College to work under Vincent du Vigneaud.
She worked in Vigneaud"s laboratory on the study of transmethylation, completing her Doctor of Philosophy in biochemistry in 1942 and continuing as a research associate until she and moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1945.
In 1945, and Simmonds began working at: as an associate professor and Simmonds as an instructor of physiological chemistry. The next year, Simmonds joined the laboratory of Edward Tatum. became a full professor in 1950, and subsequently became chairman of his department.
Simmonds only became associate professor by 1959, and she was initially denied promotion to full professorship in 1966, only reaching that rank in 1975, nearly 30 years after starting at In his memoir Eighty Years, recounts that the "delay had adverse effect on Topsy"s personal research, but the recognition of the merits of her scientific work and the quality of her contributions as a teacher could no longer be denied" by then