Fischer, Emil (Hermann) (sh) and Rhys, Jean (sh)

Fischer, Emil (Hermann) (sh)

born Oct. 9, 1852, Euskirchen, Prussia
died July 15, 1919, Berlin, Ger.

German organic chemist.

He received his Ph.D. in 1874. He determined the structures of uric acid, caffeine, and related compounds, showing that all are Derivatives of a single compound he named purine. This led him to study protein structure and the ways in which amino acids are combined in proteins. He determined the molecular structures of glucose, fructose, and many Other sugars, verifying his results by synthesizing each, and distinguished the 15 stereoisomers of glucose (see isomer; configuration; optical activity). His researches into the sugars were of unparalleled importance to organic chemistry and earned him in 1902 the second Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His investigations of fermentation laid the foundations of enzyme chemistry.

Rhys, Jean (sh)

orig. Ella Gwendolen Rees William

born Aug. 24, 1890, Roseau, Dominica, Windward Islands, West Indies
died May 14, 1979, Exeter, Devon, Eng.

Dominican-born British novelist.

Rhys left the West Indies for London to study acting at age 16. She later moved to Paris, where she was encouraged to write by Ford Madox Ford. She earned acclaim for short stories and novels set in the bohemian world of Europe in the 1920s and '30s, including Good Morning, Midnight (1939). After settling in Cornwall, she published nothing for nearly three decades before producing Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a memorable novel about Mr. Rochester's mad first wife in Charlotte Bront? 's Jane Eyre (see Bront? sisters); and two story collections.

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