Kamen, Martin

Kamen, Martin D. Radiant Science, Dark Politics. Berkeley University of California Press, 1985. 

Kamen, Martin David (1913-2002) American physical chemist and biochemist at Universities of Berkeley, Massachusetts and San Diego. 

The study of these biogenetic pathways was much assisted by the use of isotopic labeling, and Harold Urey (1893-1987) at Columbia and Martin D. Kamen (b.1913) at Berkeley were both proto-bioorganic chemists. In more recent years, NMR has come to play an important role in both mechanism and structure studies (see section on physical instrumentation). The concept of a relationship between the structure of a compound and its biochemical functioning goes back to Emil Fischer s model of a lock and key , first formulated in 1894, but many years were to elapse before bioorganic chemists were able to show how the lock and key fitted together. 

The existence of radiocarbon (14C) was not realized until 1934, when an unknown radionuclide was formed during exposure of nitrogen to neutrons in a cloud chamber (Kurie, 1934). In 1940, Martin Kamen confirmed the existence of 14C when he prepared a measurable quantity of 14C. Over the next few decades more details on the production rate of 14C in the atmosphere and possible applications for dating archeological samples continued (Anderson et al., 1947 Arnold and Libby, 1949 Anderson and Libby, 1951 Kamen, 1963 Ralph, 1971 Libby, 1982). 

In 1937 Robin Hill demonstrated that isolated chloroplasts, when placed in an aqueous solution in the presence of a suitable electron acceptor, can evolve oxygen in the light, a process that has become known as the Hill reaction. Oxygen evolution proceeds in the absence of CO2, suggesting that CO2 fixation and O2 evolution are separate processes, contrary to the then prevailing belief. Using lsO-labeled H20 and lsO-labeled CO2 in different experiments, Laurens Ruben and Martin Kamen showed in 1941 that the evolved O2 comes from water and not from CO2. Subsequent studies have elucidated the steps intervening between O2 evolution and CO2 fixation in photosynthesis. 

Sam Ruben s long-term partner, Martin Kamen wrote the following ... 

The occasion and timing of Professor Birge s announcement implicitly prophesied that Samuel Ruben and Martin Kamen would, in the future, be strong candidates for the Nobel Prize for this discovery. At age twenty-six, Sam Ruben and Martin Kamen were world-famous in physics. 

Martin Kamen and 37.5 inch cyclotron Sam Ruben Research on Photosynthesis Photographs 3.3. Supplied by Dr. George Ruben. 

Ch. 3, p. 19. Martin D. Kamen, Retdimt Science, Dark Politics, A Memoir of the Nuclear Aj e, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1985. 

Figures 3.3 B, C D shows Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at work in the Rat House, which was adjacent to the chemistry building on the Berkeley campus and adjacent to the cyclotron. Oil from vacuum pumps...

The radioactive carbon used in these studies was carbon-11, abbreviated as which was prepared by bombarding boric oxide in the 70 centimeter cyclotron. Carbon-11 has a half life of twenty minutes, which means that one half of it remains after twenty minutes, one quarter remains after forty minutes, one eighth remains after one hour, one part in sixty four remains after two hours. An experiment using carbon-11 needs to be completed within a small number of hours. A book by Martin D. Kamen Radiant Science, Dark Politics, A Memoir of the Nuclear A e, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1985] gives this account of working in the laboratory with the fast decaying carbon-11. 

Although a large amount of new information was obtained using the shortlived carbon-11, there are processes in biology that occur with a time scale much longer than two hours. Physicists predicted the existence of a heavier form of carbon, carbon-14, which should have a half life of several years, but none had been able to find it. Since 1935, Martin Kamen had tried repeatedly to make carbon-14. 

Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben produced carbon-14 by heavy, long-term pounding of graphite (pure carbon) with a beam of particles called deuterons in the cyclotron. 

Glen Seaborg wrote in his diary of Wednesday, February 28, 1940. At the evening Nuclear Seminar, I learned that Sam Ruben and Martin Kamen... 

Phosgene, a doubly noxious carbonic acid chloride (Cl-CO-Cl), could react with two proteins, I reasoned, and the novel cross-linked or double protein could elicit an immune response in the limg and consequent accumulation of fluid. So I proceeded, with Sam s encouragement, to syntliesize phosgene from the carbon eleven ( C02) produced by Martin Kamen in the 27.5 inch (70 cm) cyclotron near the Rat House, where I and Sam and Bill Libby had our laboratories. Mine, of course, amounted to less than eight feet [2.4 m] of bench in my office, which I had inherited from Henry Taube. Reduction of carbon dioxide over hot zinc powder was easy and quick. Then, addition of chlorine yielded the phosgene, all in about twenty minutes. We administered this to a poor rat and began to determine if the radioactivity was protein-bound as I expected. 

It was at that time that I became acquainted with Bill Gwinn, Tom Norris, and Ken Pitzer, although Ken had been my freshman Chem lA lecturer. John Huston and Kent Harmon joined the project about that time. Bill was an instructor, and I believe Tom was too, although it is possible that Tom had just finished his thesis work with Ruben. Everything I knew about rats, C-11, C-14, and photosynthesis came from being around these people. I was not involved with any of the studies. I recall that Martin Kamen was aroimd also, but, as he was not involved in the war work, I had little to do with him. 

Instructor, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley. Cll and C14 research on photosynthesis with Sam Ruben and Martin D. Kamen. Isolation of dark C02 fixation products of photosynthesis. 

Jencks, W.P. (1983) in From Cyclotrons to Cytochromes - A Symposium in Honor of Martin Kamen s 65th Birthday, August 27-31, 1978, La Jolla, CA, in press. 

In June 1946, President Truman signed an executive order that made reartor-produced iodine-131 and other radionuclides available from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. On August 2,1946, the first shipment of carbon-14 was made to Martin Kamen at the Lawrence Laboratory in Berkeley, California. The shipment was kept secret because Kamen was falsely suspected by many of the public to be a communist. The first announced shipment to a medical facility was to the Bermard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital at Washington University in St. Louis. 

Cyclotron-produced oxygen-15 and carbon-11 are the most fundamental elements in living systems. In the 1930s, chemist Martin Kamen, working with Ernest Lawrence, discovered that the oxygen produced by the process of photosynthesis in plants came from water, not from carbon dioxide, as had been previously thought... 

K.R. Mackenzie discover the element astatine. American physicists Glerm T. Seaborg, Arthur Wahl, and Joseph Kennedy discover the element plutonium. American physicists Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson discover the element neptuniiun. Swiss scientist Paul Muller invents DDT. American biochemist Vincent Du Vigneaud identifies biotin. American biochemist Martin David Kamen discovers carbon-14, a radioactive isotope later used to date ancient materials. 

Robert A. Alberty Warren W. Brandt Donald G. Davis William J. Burke James F. Hornig W. Donald Cooke S. E. Wiberley Robert H. Baker Wouter Bosch C. Ernest Birchenall Armin H. Gropp Francis J. Behai Harrison Shull Harold S. Bailey James R. Arnold Martin J. Kamen J. Reid Shelton Wesley J. Dale F. I. Brownley, Jr. William K. Easley Frederick T. Wall Edward L. Alexander Frank H. Hurley R. F. Kruh... 

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