Gortner was born on March 20, 1885, in O'Neill, Nebraska, the third son and youngest of four children of Joseph Ross Gortner, a Methodist minister, and Louisa Elizabeth (Waters) Gortner. His father, whose German forebears had settled in Pennsylvania in the mid-eighteenth century, had moved west, first to Illinois and then in 1882 to Nebraska. There he took up a homestead while covering a sixty-mile circuit each week. In 1887 he enlisted as a missionary and took his family to Liberia. Early in 1888, when Ross was nearly three, his father died of "African fever" (probably malaria or yellow fever), and the mother and children returned to Nebraska.
Education
Gortner secured his early education under the handicap of frequent moves from one Nebraska town to another and the added responsibility, for several years, of caring for his invalid mother and doing all the housework. In 1902 his mother settled in University Place, near Lincoln, Nebraska, where Gortner entered the preparatory and college departments of Nebraska Wesleyan University. In the next five years he completed a three-year preparatory course and a four-year college course. At Nebraska Wesleyan Prof. Frederick J. Alway interested Gortner in chemistry; he earned his tuition by working as an assistant in that department, and by 1907, when he received the B. S. degree, he had published five papers with Alway. Gortner secured an assistantship at the University of Toronto, where he studied physical chemistry under W. Lash Miller, receiving the M. S. degree in 1908. From Toronto he moved to Columbia University, where his work in organic chemistry under Marston T. Bogert earned him the Ph. D. degree in 1909.
Career
From 1909 to 1914 Gortner spent in research at the Carnegie Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Under the influence of the botanist James Arthur Harris, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship, Gortner quickly recognized the role of physical chemistry in the understanding of biological problems and did pioneer work in the application of colloid chemistry to biology. Shifting his primary interest from organic to biological chemistry, he embarked on studies of melanin pigments in animals, the chemical changes associated with embryonic growth, and, in association with Harris, the physicochemical characteristics of saps isolated from plants. In 1914 Gortner moved to the University of Minnesota as associate professor of soil chemistry in the College of Agriculture, where his former teacher Alway had recently been appointed professor. Two years later he was made associate professor of agricultural biochemistry; and the following year he became both professor and head of the division of agricultural biochemistry at the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, a double appointment which he held for the rest of his life. Gortner first carried out research in the organic constituents of soil, but he later turned his attention to the nature of proteins, particularly as representatives of colloidal systems. Work on the chemistry of flour led to elucidation of the nature of the various proteins present in the wheat grain. He also studied the chemistry of wood and the pulping process, and the role of water in living processes. He published more than 300 papers and books, whose titles attest to the broad-ranging nature of his mind and his concern for the influence of scientific discoveries on society as a whole. His textbook, Outlines of Biochemistry (1929), became a major treatise and was unique in its day for the emphasis given to proteins as part of a colloidal system. His George Fisher Baker Lectures at Cornell University (1935-1936) were published as Selected Topics in Colloid Chemistry (1937). Gortner's greatest influence was probably as a teacher, and his efforts went far beyond the formal classroom. He built up a large graduate program at Minnesota and personally directed the work of more than eighty candidates for advanced degrees. His enthusiasm, not only for biochemistry but for science as a whole, caused him to be widely sought as a lecturer and writer. A popular lecture, "Scientific Genealogy, " embodied his view that a scientist gains immortality through the work of his students. In the summer of 1938, while serving as a consultant to the Sugar Planters Experiment Station in Hawaii, he suffered a heart attack which was correctly diagnosed only after his return to Minnesota in the fall. Although he remained in poor health, he embarked on a study of sulfur metabolism in plants and continued his university duties with much of his usual enthusiasm, until hospitalized by severe heart attacks. He died at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 30, 1942, a few days before a planned testimonial dinner in his honor.
Achievements
Gortner's work was characterized, not by a major theoretical contribution but by a steady series of factual advances leading to an improved understanding of plants and animals as chemical systems.
Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1935); member of the American Chemical Society (1919); President of the American Society of Naturalists (1932); President of Sigma Xi (1942)
Connections
Gortner was married on August 4, 1909, to Catherine Victoria Willis of Dorchester, Nebraska. Their four children were Elora Catherine, Ross Aiken, Willis Alway, and Alice Louise. Both sons became biochemists. Mrs. Gortner died in 1930, and on January 12, 1931, Gortner married Rachel Rude, who had been his secretary for many years.
