Footnotes

• ↵1 Abbreviations used are: P450, cytochrome P450; TPNH, triphosphopyridine nucleotide.

• 

• Ronald W. Estabrook was born at Albany, New York on January 3, 1926. He was educated in the public school system of Albany before entering the Navy in 1943, where he was in the Navy V-12 program at Princeton University and Officer Training School at the University of Notre Dame. He served as an officer on a subchaser and a mine sweeper in Okinawa and Japan. Upon discharge from the Navy, he continued his undergraduate education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, where he graduated with a B.S. (Biology) in 1950; Estabrook did his graduate training in biochemistry at the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York (1954); and postdoctoral training in biophysics with Britton Chance at the Johnson Research Foundation, University of Pennsylvania. He studied at the Molteno Institute, Cambridge University, in England, with David Kielin. In 1959 Dr. Estabrook joined the faculty of the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania where he advanced to the rank of Professor of Physical Biochemistry. In 1962 he published with David Cooper and Otto Rosenthal, of the Department of Surgery of the University of Pennsylvania, seminal studies describing the enzymatic (functional) properties of the hemoprotein now known as cytochrome P450. In 1968 Estabrook moved to Dallas, Texas to serve as Virginia Lazenby O'Hara Professor of Biochemistry and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. In 1982 Estabrook returned to the laboratory bench where he is now applying the techniques of molecular biology to the study of the enzymatic properties of different P450s expressed in different types of cells.

• Estabrook has coauthored over 280 publications including the editing of 15 books. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and awarded an honorary Doctor of Medicine from the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm, Sweden in 1981 and a Doctor of Science from the University of Rochester (1981). He has served on numerous national and international advisory committees including the Governing Board of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and the Council of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

• • Received April 22, 2003.
  • Accepted June 4, 2003.